TV audio improvement for a slightly deaf person

[Bill Wright]

She does

I don't think she needs much more volume, just an improvement in sound quality.

That is a factor, for sure.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

That's an idea. I'll check up on the telly.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

That looks very promising.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

That's a very good question. Cheers.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

I'll have to look into that I suppose.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

She's not old, and is quite techy. She was teaching basic computer use to adults until recently. She doesn't know anything about audio gadgets though.

Bill

[tabbypurr]

AGC or VOGAD needed

NT

[Richard]

Needs thinking aid adjusted.

[pete]

On 4 Sep 2018, GB wrote (in article ):

This is the sort of system I use myself. It allows me to set the volume in the earphones as loud as I like without affecting the volume from the loudspeakers. They are terrific. I bought mine at Lidl?s for about £30 a year or so ago. I find worn in the ear deaf aids quite unsuitable for listening to TV or to music. petefj

[pete]

On 5 Sep 2018, pete wrote (in article):

I forgot to add the follow up url, apologies petefj

[Martin Brown]

OK so you have some degrees of freedom to play with.

This is unclear. She must have lost quite a lot of hearing if she can't follow the TV with it louder than normal and a hearing aid. Her best bet might be to go on a lip reading course like my dad did.

The T setting as far as I can tell (apart from in banks and other very background noise intensive environments) is a waste of time on the modern digital filtered hearing aids.

Subtitles will help a lot but not all channels offer them.

Her hearing is probably badly frequency limited so "good" sound quality for her is almost certainly going to sound like a bad phone line to you. You want speakers and frequency response optimised for her hearing ideally.

As a quick test jerry rig a pair of PC speakers either side of her favourite chair might be worth a try but don't expect miracles. Even better if you can run the sound through a PC with a digital filtering program to let you adjust the response until she finds speech clear.

[charles]

just been using it at a lecture - much clearer than straight listening.

[Bob Latham]

For what it is worth, I've had a couple of Sony Sound bars and a Sony Sound base. To be honest I was not very impressed with any of them.

A couple of years ago I purchased a small amp and speakers to do the job. They are:

Amplifier: Denon Ceol RCDN9 Speakers: Q Acoustics 3020

My wife and I think this little system blows away every sound bar we've ever heard plus it is actually proper stereo and the amp had loads of facilities: FM-Tuner, CD player, optical inputs, analogue input, internet radio, and best of all streaming FLAC from my NAS with 192/24 Hi Res and gapless.

We liked the little system so much we got another for another room. I'd be very surprised if any sound bar came near it and the money is similar if you shop around.

Bob.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

If it's only for speech a soundbar (without sub or whatever) should be OK. Although with any such speakers, a graphic equaliser might make them clearer for speech. Sadly, a vast amount of TV speech is of remarkably poor quality. Does she have the same problem with say R4?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Quite. Everything else being equal, a shorter path from the speakers to listener helps (within reason) Less added room acoustics.

[whisky-dave]

When I bought my TV with an £80 sound bar from argos it was the cheape st they had, but even that had options for cinema, music, + a few others an d basic frequency adjustments including base and treble and a sub-woofer.

No idea whether it's better or not but I don't like it on for most viewing and at low volumes it deosn't sound as good as the internal speakers. It's only when I listen to music (via yuotube) or films that I use it. It just sounds wrong/weird when listing to docs, the news, and most speach mostly I only use it for action type films.

But if you buy it from a place like argos you can try it and take it back i f it doesnlt work, I think unless it;s changed in the last few years.

[Bill]

Coincidentally, a friend of mine had one of these Sony's arrive yesterday. He has just been on the phone, having failed to get it to work.

Apparently, it uses TOSLink, which meant he had to disconnect the soundbar. He had ordered a toslink splitter with it, but that has to come separately from China.

The instructions say to set the TV output to pcm, and he says he has been down every menu and can't find this setting.

He has gone off to download the TV instructions so he can print them in readable form, after which he says he will ring back if he still needs help.

I guess that all I'll be able to do is offer sympathy and maybe a bit of calm, as I know little about the connections on my telly, let alone his.

[newshound]

Audacity is a very powerful free program and has an equalisation tool. Alternatively you could use GarageBand, if you have a Mac.

[Graeme]

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

Interesting comparison, which had not occurred to me, with my own TV listening problems. I struggle with the TV, without the sound bar, but have no problems with the radio, usually R2 or R4, usually using a portable radio bought for my 21st, 45 years ago, so not exactly top of the range 'hi fi'.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Top of te range hifi is in fact exactly the wriong choice for someone with heraing difficulties. The top 4 octaves are wasted, and the bottom

4 just muddy the waters.

The old '300Hz - 3kHz' with loads of intermodulatins is what partially deaf people get.

Its wise to boost the 1-3Khz band massively, and roll the bass off a LOT