Depending on the age of the Morse series, they went over to using radio mics rather early on with quite appalling results. So not a benchmark for decent speech quality.
I'd be inclined to fit a graphic equaliser between the device and the headphones. Putting a large peak around 3 kHz can improve clarity dramatically. As can rolling off the bass end. If nothing else you'll have great fun playing. ;-)
The easy and possibly the best way is to buy a decent AV amp and use HDMI audio for it all.
It works well for my STB, bluray and media player and AV amps are HiFi if you buy the right one.
Most of the TV (that I watch) is DD5.1 including BBC and ITV and most of the programs are DD5.1. DD5.1 is not HiFi, its compressed a lot. Bluray audio is usually HiFi but you do need a decoder in the AV amp to get the best from it. For CDs then the bluray player is as good as *any* cd player you get that uses digital out, there is no point in paying more than £20 for a CD player if you are using digital out whatever HiFi buffs think.
Are there decent AV amps at a sensible price? Most seem to have fairly mediocre audio performance. Whereas decent analogue amps have been around for many a year.
Ah. I find any 'surround' just a distraction over decent stereo.
All that is fine if you only watch films. I got the impression the OP was more interested in ordinary broadcast TV.
The AV amps I looked at had similar specs to audio amps of similar power. They are very good unless you wind them up to 11.
What they lacked was magnetic cartridge inputs.
My ?400 Samsung telly has downward facing speakers but it still manages produces a very creditable sound along with some of that nice speech emphasis which speakers in old style tellys nearly always used to have.
My ?170 Panasonic sound bar has various settings but surprisngly none are as effective on speech or general programmes as the telly. If I'm watching a movie I switch on the sound bar but for most of my watching it is turned off especially as its has an audible cooling fan in the subwoofer.
Of course I'm not saying my telly play audio like those old high price B&O tellys did but it does a surprisingly acceptable job.
Next time I would go for a higher spec sound bar or more likely a small AV amp but feeding just 2+1 speakers to keep it tidy looking.
Dave, it's only a matter of time before the marketing men offer us "The first TV with built in soundbar".
I suppose it would be too much to ask for some surround on the radio? With DAB you have to be grateful if they give you joint stereo.
Waiting for an HD TV with HD sound. ;-)
I've always recorded then watched later, so I can skip adverts. I simply can't stand them.
Does radio still exist? I thought that got outdated decades ago.
In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes
Ha!
Mine is a Panasonic LCD with both digital audio out and L/R audio out.
Somebody once gifted me some TV earphones. I must dig them out and see if they work. Bang goes being able to answer the doorbell or the telephone!
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Nobody AFAIK has defined what hi-fi is, or isn't. I accept the point, if indeed you were making it, that the number of sound channels offered is not proportional to fidelity, often it will be quite the contrary.
My soundbar is connected to the telly using ARC but sadly only the volume is controlled by the TV remote.
All the other settings, including on/off, need the sound bar remote control.
Using the smart telly I downloaded the right profile for the sound bar but it wouldn't work.
The only surround system I was truly impressed by was Ambisonics. That used no less than 8 full broadcast quality speakers and associated amps. Plus the decoding equipment itself. Let's say 20 grand plus in today's money.
However, you can get a very respectable 3D sound stage with ordinary stereo - provided it is recorded properly. But you do need good acoustics in your listening room. Which the vogue for bare floorboards etc disallows.
I think it's only available inside cars these days.
A decent car can play a CD/mp3/cassette/something slightly more useful than wittering DJs.
IIRC The main BBC channels are 256 K MP2 which should be good enough.
;-(.....
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Here yer go.
Put in you age birth date and sex and then it will replay a series of Three numbers in increasing amounts of noise.
Then it'll tell you if your OK for your age or not!..
Bit odd, I guess you've already looked for options to enable power control either in the Sound Bar and/or the telly. The HDMI control stuff normally "just works" and peripials powering down when the telly goes into standby is normal. Like wise telly powering up if you turn on the DVD player and tell it to display something.
Yes, the ARC connected soundbar does switch on and off with the telly so I suppose that could be seen as controlled from the telly remote control.
I was saying that the telly remote control didn't let me switch the soundbar on/off on its own. I sometimes want to do this because I don't find the soundbar always enhances the audio like when there's wind noise on an outside broadcast and the bass is overpowering.
However the telly remote control doesn't adjust any other settings such as subwoofer volume, spatial effects, speech clarity, input selection and so on.
In fact, the smart telly's menus allow me to download a profile for the specific model of soundbar so that I can operate the soundbar by using an infra-red sender directly attached by wire to the telly. But it doesn't work.
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