How to fix muffled TV dialogue — 3 settings that make speech clearer

How To
By published

Struggling to hear those festive programs? Improve your TV’s dialogue quality with these tips

Woman watching TV
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

When watching an absorbing drama or movie, you might struggle to hear the dialogue. The natural solution is to turn up the volume — but this creates a new problem. When an action scene arrives, the audio becomes painfully loud, forcing you to turn it back down.

This back-and-forth has become more common over the years and isn't helped by actors who mumble their way through scenes. But while you could turn on closed captions for clearer dialogue or solve the problem of small TV speakers by investing in a soundbar, you may want to try your TV's built-in audio settings first.

1. Change the mode

The features and settings built into different televisions vary but modern sets tend to have a range of preset sound modes.

Dive into your television’s settings — perhaps look for a Settings cog icon on the remote controller — and select the Sound section.

Then look through the modes for one that appears to relate to dialogue. You may find you can choose Clear Voice or something similar.

2. Reduce volume fluctuations

Sometimes, watching television can feel like a battle. One minute there’s an action scene and you’re turning the volume down. The next minute, there’s some mumbling dialogue and you’re turning the volume up again.

But there is a way to level the audio so that the difference between these two sound states is reduced. It’s called dynamic range compression.

Consult your manual to find this. It gets called all kinds of different names from “compressed” to “levelling”. You may even see it as an acronym (DRC).

Some televisions may have Auto Volume Levellers and while it’s different to DRC, the effect is on the same lines. It’s all about achieving consistency. Simply select the compression or volume leveller feature and listen out for the difference.

3. Make use of acoustic tuning

The idea is to play around in the sound settings to see what works best for you. Some televisions such as the LG CX range will allow for acoustic tuning, using artificial intelligence, for example.

If you select AI Acoustic Tuning, you’ll be able to optimise the sound based on the room’s acoustics and this could achieve clearer audio.

You may also find a built-in equalizer: boost the treble for clearer speech.

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David Crookes
David Crookes
Contributor

David Crookes is a freelance writer, reporter, editor and author. He has written for technology and gaming magazines including Retro Gamer, Web User, Micro Mart, MagPi, Android, iCreate, Total PC Gaming, T3 and Macworld. He has also covered crime, history, politics, education, health, sport, film, music and more, and been a producer for BBC Radio 5 Live.

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