Sound on my new radio is muffled.

[micky]

I took the cord out.

It's brand new. I don't want to scuff it.

[micky]

[T'yon Williams]

It's an election year and there is another scamdemic in progress. If it's a lefty station, the announcer/DJ is likely sitting alone in the studio and wearing an N95 mask.

[rbowman]

Considering two (out of thirteen) of the Amazon reviews complained about the sound and one said a speaker was DOA I'd lean toward the problem not being with micky's ears.

[rbowman]

Yeah but 2 out of the 13 written reviews complained about the sound. With that small a sample I pay more attention to the negative reviews.

[hubops]

Our kitchen table radio - we picked up at the Sally Ann some many years ago for ~ $ 10. is an Altec Lansing with an Ipod dock .. it wasn't very old and in pristine condition -

- my guess is that the much-too-frequent Ipod " improvements " / upgrades made the dock obsolete.

Crystal clear sound - at normal kitchen volumes - for both music and voice - .. but .. no cool red & blue lights .. dang . :-) John T.

[Clare Snyder]

If you get a "really good" hearing aid it doesn't have to take long to get used to it. For me the improvement was INSTANT and there has been no "getting used to" the hearing aids. They set me back more than the value of my car and truck at the time combined - and worth EVERY PENNY!!!! I can recommend Otikon OPN 1 very highly - and I hear the newer models are even better - mine are over 6 years old now - - -

[Clare Snyder]

Just get a rasdio app for your computer

[Clare Snyder]

Rags and paper will muffle it even more. It might have bad "grille cloth" affecting the sound??. Is it a vented or ducted enclosure or accoustic suspension? only 1 speaker? what size cone?

[Clare Snyder]

My Otikons were over $7000 - I son't wear them at night and I have my hearing checked every year and they are adjusted if required. Thankfully my hearing hasn'tchanged much over tha last 5 years

[micky]

I have that, but when I use it, I can't change stations from my bed.

Or any other room but when I'm not in bed I don't mind going to the computer to change stations.

[micky]

Aha.

I may well need hearing aids some day** but if I'm not going to sleep with them, they won't help me with this radio.

**I already have been using Hearphones by Bose, but I've mislaid them. They aren't sold new anymore, and used, I wonder how much life is left in the rechargeable battery.

So I bought a pair from Amazon, 100 and something. They might have an adjustment. I have to look at the app that comes with them, but I'm sure it's nowhere near as good as yours, more like something they put in so they can say they have something. And sometimes the sound sounds bad. Most of the time I don't need them. I have conversations with lots of people and everything is fine, so I often forget to bring it with me to the doctor, movies, meetings, but I'm getting better.

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Fri, 22 Sep 2023 13:42:01 -0400) it happened micky [e-mail] wrote in [e-mail]:

Is there a headphone connector? If it sounds OK on headphones then the speaker / acoustics of the cabinet is bad. Use external speaker? or dump it in the garbage, give it away?

[Jasen Betts]

Perhaps tweeter, or midrange driver missing or defective. perhaps speaker cone is crooked and hung up. perhaps someone was smuggling illict substances in the speaker box and for reasons was unable to retreive them, and you have the result.

Have you tried headphones, does that improve the sound? If it sounds good with headphones the problem is probably inside the speaker box.

[Retirednoguilt]

I have a set of ReSound Linx Quatro hearing aids that were recommended by my audiologist at Walter Reed. I got them about 4 years ago. Yes, they were custom tuned. Initially set to compensate for my audiogram and then tweaked by my subjective comments. They retailed at that time for about $5K so I'm told. Being retired military, I qualify for the DoD's hearing aids at cost program. My total cost out of pocket was about $850. The audiologist recommended an annual checkup or anytime sooner if a problem develops.

Reading some of your other comments in this thread, it seems that you don't have a complaint of muffled sound when listening to other radios. If that's the case, and the other radios have a similar audio frequency response, your problem may not be your hearing. Perhaps it is the radio. Good luck!

[legg]

<snip>

Suggest you scroll through the various equalizer presets available, to see if a usable difference is noted. A factory default is offered.

It's possible that there's harness error/damage off the production floor.

Return it if not satisfied.

RL

[micky]

I think it's the radio too, but I do have an interest in hearing aids. I hear about 80% of the people I meet fine, but some talk so low I can't. And at meetings, but those are not as common anymore. At home with zoom I can just turn up the volume. And at movies.

I have a $150 "hearing amplifer" and it works well at my current level of hearing. Although it has a good design, they seem to have used a cheap on/off switch and sometimes when I turn it off it stays on and vice versa. It's just a slide switch, but embedded in hard rubber so I can't replace it. Maybe I'm getting more used to it, although... I can understand the voice when it says "Power off" or "Power on" but after she says On she says something else and I can't come close to understanding. (In this casee, it is not about my hearing, but about the device.)

I like the onse with a yoke, so when they fall out of my ears as they often do, I don't lose them. None of the high quality hearing aids like yours or the Otikon that Clare mentinoed come in yoke form, do they?

[micky]

Ah, a great suggestion. I think so, in the back. With a small jack. I have to find my headset with the small plug. It's cheap too so maybe I should go straight to***

I never dump anything in the garbage, but I'll admit, when I offered some computer speakers with terrible sound, and I said they might be good for children because they had terrible sound, no one replied.

There still isn't a Wifi radio with everything I want. One or two others do have presets, but each one has somet hing I don't like.

External speakers sounds good. *** It might have bluetooth output** and I could send it to the AM/FM radio^^ on the shelf above that does have bluetooth input. It won't have stereo but I can live without that. Mostly I listen to talk anyhow. **The manual says "Integrated bluetooth... transmitter to stream to Bluetooth headsets. ... Bluetooth audio to every room in your house".

It can work as transmitter or receiver but not both at the same time. -- that's fine.

Well, the Grace had already found and would pair with/connect to my computer which is more than 40 feet away, farther than I thought normal bluetooth range was, but it won't find the Sangean radio which is one foot above it. The Sangean Bluetooth is still working because it paired with Alexa as soon as I put the radio on Bluetooth. In fact, I unplugged Alexa to keep it/her from interfering.

So I'm fairly sure I can get this to work, but I need some time to think about it.

^^The Sangean WR-22 AM/FM radio on the shelf above has good sound even though it sells even 3.8 years later for $149.

I bought a cheap early version of Alexa, the one that's shaped like a cylinder of Quaker, and it only has 10 levels of volume and usually none were the right one, so I send it to this radio that has 30 levels of volume. That works okay but I'd rather just push a button than have to yell, Alexa play CNN for two hours

[micky]

Maybe they're muffle the bass and leave the treble alone?

I'll look again, remove it if it's easy.

Is it a vented or ducted enclosure or

2 speakers, the fronts ares about 4" square. No vents afaik. Maybe I should drill one or will that just help the bass?

That's all that I know now.

[micky]

The PC is at the far end of the hall, and when in bed, I don't want to go there to change stations. With the regular radio, I change stations a lot. Sometimes back and forth and back and forth.

The phone could be by my bed, but in practice the phone is off unless I'm going somewhere. And then off again when I get home. I've used the phone for this sort of thing while travelling and in the car, and it's just not as easy as pushing a button

I may have let too much time go by. I'm over the month that Amazon gives, but I did it pretty much knowing there was nothing else I wanted. BTW, when I sent in my last suggestion for firmware improvement, I mentioned in passing that I haven't found CNN or MSNBC yet. She still volunteered that I could find CNN among the IHeart entries, by typing in, on the radio, CNN, and it worked. (I already quoted that she said MSNBC change their stream name frequently!)

I've sent in two suggestions, to delink the Sleep function from most of the other controls, and to add a Seek function.

I'm saving complaining about the sound for last, I'm not sure why. Maybe they'll like me because I've been so helpful (although why they didnt' think of Seek I do not know. Maybe they have.) I guess the worst would be moving it to the kitchen, where I don't mind if the sound is louder.

I'm looking at its webpage now. Very good, and free. Thanks.