Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

background sound

Aug 18, 2015 2:27PM PDT

perhaps its because i'm getting old, but i find it difficult to hear the actors over the music and special effects and "background" noise.
is there a way to turn down the non conversational stuff.
with all the adjustments that can be made to the picture and sound, seems that there would be a separate adjustment between sound and voices. thanks, david

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
This is why I turned on CC (closed captioning.)
Aug 18, 2015 10:36PM PDT
- Collapse -
Answer
I blame this squarely on the "sound man".
Aug 18, 2015 11:33PM PDT

The cnet article says cheap tv speaker is partially at fault, that makes no sense if he's listening the same thing that I heard. Why should there be background music at all when talking is going on? I am getting old but I will refuse to blame my hearing. Sorry I don't have any solution, but what I do is just not watch them because not all of them are this way. I notice this is more true with Chinese video then any other country (I watch Korean, Spanish, British, and of course U. S.).

- Collapse -
Answer
not unless you have an equalizer
Aug 18, 2015 11:48PM PDT

with that you can get at the 1 Khz range of voice and lessen the sounds from the other ranges. If running from a PC, then can add a software equalizer if you don't already have one. For instance AMD has the Catalyst software for use with motherboards using it's chips. Realtek has an equalizer which can be installed too, and maybe already is.

Bass to Soprano Hz and kHz range.
http://www.zytrax.com/tech/audio/audio.html

Boosting that range and lowering the others can bring voice out more.