How do I get better sound from a television?

The complaint is nearly always the same: dialogue is inaudible while the music and effects are deafening. That is a specific and largely fixable problem, and it is worth trying the settings before assuming a soundbar is required.

Step by step

1. Understand why it sounds bad.A television a few centimetres deep has no cabinet volume, so the speakers are small and usually fire down or backwards into the wall. Physics rather than a fault, and it is why every thin television has this problem.
2. Turn off the processing modes first.Virtual surround, bass boost, clarity enhancement and similar. They smear the sound and are the usual cause of dialogue disappearing under everything else. Standard or Movie is a better starting point.
3. Try the speech or dialogue preset.Most televisions have one, sometimes called Clear Voice or News. It emphasises the frequency range speech sits in and is the single most effective setting for the common complaint.
4. Turn on dynamic range compression.Sometimes called night mode, DRC or volume levelling. It reduces the gap between quiet dialogue and loud effects, which is exactly the problem in most film and drama mixes.
5. Check the audio output format.If the television is set to output a surround format its own speakers cannot reproduce, the downmix is often poor. Setting it to stereo or PCM frequently improves things noticeably.
6. Move it away from the wall.Rear-firing speakers need some space. A few centimetres changes the sound, and a television pushed flat against a wall or recessed into an alcove is at its worst.
7. Deal with the room.A hard room with bare floors and no soft furnishing makes speech harder to follow. A rug or curtains does more than people expect, and costs nothing if they are already available.
8. Use subtitles without embarrassment.Modern film and drama mixes genuinely are harder to follow than older ones, for reasons of how they are produced. Subtitles are not an admission of anything.
9. Consider a soundbar if the settings do not do it.A soundbar has room for a proper driver and puts it in front of you rather than behind the screen. Even an inexpensive one is a large step up, and dialogue clarity is what most people notice first.
10. Choose a soundbar by what you watch.For dialogue clarity, a simple two- or three-channel bar with a centre channel is the priority. A subwoofer adds impact for film and does nothing for speech. Do not buy channels you have no room to place.
11. Connect it by HDMI eARC where possible.It carries better audio formats and lets the television remote control the volume. Optical works and is more limited. Check which your television has before buying.
12. Consider headphones for one person.Most televisions support Bluetooth headphones. For late-night watching or one person who needs it louder than everyone else, that solves it without changing anything else.

Tips

• Try the settings before spending. The speech preset plus dynamic range compression resolves the complaint for a large share of people at no cost.
• If the television is in a cabinet or an alcove, that is likely doing more damage than the speakers. Pulling it forward is free.
• A soundbar sitting in front of the screen can block the infrared receiver. Check the remote still works before fixing it in place.

Common mistakes

• Leaving virtual surround and enhancement modes on — They process the sound in ways that smear speech into the rest of the mix. Turning them off is usually an improvement rather than a compromise.
• Buying a large surround package for a small room — Rear speakers need placement and cabling that most rooms cannot accommodate. A good two- or three-channel bar in the right position beats a badly placed five-channel set.

If it doesn't work

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