If you’re having trouble understanding dialogue when watching movies or shows on TV, it might not be your hearing. It could be your TV settings or hardware that’s making it hard to hear speech. Either way, there are some quick and easy fixes.
The most likely culprit for poor sound is the TV’s tiny speakers. The latest TVs may be able to produce amazing images, but with such thin frames, they can also suffer from poor sound quality.Â
Read more: Best TVs of 2023
If you’re using a separate speaker or soundbar, perhaps errant settings are to blame. One quick fix is enabling subtitles on your TV, but if you want to have the set on in the background, then it’s sound quality we need to rectify. Let’s begin.
1. Check your TV’s sound settings
Television speakers sound terrible out of the box, but most TVs have settings you can use to improve their audio a little. For example, a while back some friends called me to fix their own TV sound — they said the dialogue was boomy and hard to understand. When I got there, I found the soundtrack was distorting at anything but the quietest levels. A look inside the settings uncovered why: Someone had created a weird custom mode that had the bass jacked all the way up.
Bass in particular is the enemy of understandable speech: It tends to hide the frequencies that help us decipher what people are saying. Rather than play with individual bass and treble controls, the easiest thing to do is to try the preset sound modes first.Â
1. Use your remote to access the TV’s Settings menu, then look for a section called Audio, Sound or something similar.
2. At the top of the menu, there should be a selection of presets such as Movie, User or Standard.Â
3. While watching a speech-heavy show or movie, cycle through the…
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