Soundbar Way Better than TV Adapter for Watching TV

Assistive Listening Devices
1

I recently (mid December) upgraded to More 1 HA’s and the 3.0 TV adapter after 7 years of Oticon Nera2 Pro’s and the 2.0 TV adapter. A huge improvement, and I immediately liked watching TV with the adapter over using my Vizio 5.1 soundbar (which made dialog sound muddy to me). Much clearer dialog and better sound from the TV adapter, was my reaction.

But my soundbar was old (5 years), so I decided to look at upgrading it to get that surround movie experience. My search eventually focused on the Polk MagniFi Mini AX soundbar, because expert reviewers consistently mentioned how clear it made dialog, while also providing great sound.So I bought the basic system (without surround speakers) last week.

Wow! I system has a voice enhancement system, and it really works, without messing up anything else. It’s a great system, as most expert reviewers state (there are multiple expert reviews for this system out there).

The kicker: I just compared a test scene using the new soundbar vs my TV adapter (with bass in the HAs set to max). Not even close! The HA’s sound like tinny old speakers in comparison, with dialog not any clearer (it is perfectly clear for me on the soundbar, with dialog enhancement set to max).

Dialog enhancement seems to be a feature of Polk soundbars, and it works very well. Other manufacturers appear to have the same thing, but I obviously can’t speak to their effectiveness.

In summary, I highly recommend this soundbar to anyone with HAs who wants clear dialog with a much more immersive movie viewing experience. Kinda risk-free to try as well, because Polk has a 60 day trial period, and if you don’t like them you can return them, shipping prepaid, for a full refund.

I am in no way affiliated with Polk Audio etc. etc., just a retired government worker in Canada with HAs, who is really impressed with this soundbar.

Disclaimer/FYI: Based on user reviews, this, or any other soundbar, may not work as well in specific conditions. My TV setup is in a large room (22 feet X 15-22 feet wide), with normal 8 foot ceilings and a hardwood floor. There is an area rug and cloth sectional facing the TV, which is mounted on a 24" high bookshelf.

6 Likes
2

My hearing still needs the TV adapter to understand what is being said.

3

@cvkemp Do you have the same soundbar? Otherwise, you’ve missed my point - I used to need the TV adapter as well, to understand dialog. And my audiogram doesn’t look much different than yours…

1 Like
4

My issues with speech doesn’t really show up with an audiogram. I have a combination of generic and loud noise hearing loss due to military service. I have a very hard time understanding speech even with no background noise. And my other issue is the fact my wife must have supernatural hearing because she always adjusts the TV such that the only way I am going to hear it is with the streaming to my aids.

2 Likes
5

We may not be all that different, although I realize that there is no real way to compare hearing differences…

As far back as I can remember (college), I have had very poor hearing in my left ear. CAT scans and other tests in my 50s revealed nothing - probably nerve damage, probably from a childhood illness (scarlet fever? I recall being delirious with a very high fever). So all of my adult life I just kept people and conversations on my right relying solely on my right ear.

Then in my 50s I started to get age related hearing loss in my right ear, and had to get hearing aids. But I noticed that even with hearing aids sound in my left ear always seemed distorted, probably because I had never used it to hear anything.So I have always had trouble understanding speech, because one ear always seemed to be sending me distorted sound. Especially confusing in noisy environments. So while my WRS in my left ear is 68%, that is in a quiet environment, and even then I have to really concentrate to figure out the words. It always seems to take a second or two to process the sound from that ear, even in that quiet environment. So of course in noisy environments conversations are very hard - when at a party, I end up zoning out and sitting in a corner because the conversations just become a buzz to my brain.

Anyway I am amazed with this soundbar because when dialog is set to the max, voices become clear in spite of the background. Although my situation is not comparable to yours, because I control the remotes!! Well, really because my wife has age-related hearing loss, and also has had trouble discerning dialog on the TV, so we really like the same sound adjustments.

2 Likes
6

It is great that it works for you. My wife and I have the Bose sound bar that is connected to our TV by the audio optical fiber cable. I have a splitter that also connects my Oticon TV adapter by way of the audio optic cable. When my wife isn’t home I can hear and understand with the sound bar very easily once I adjust the sound for my default volume of my aids. But when my wife is home the sound bar volume has to be lowered to the point all I hear is a low background noise.

2 Likes
7

I have an old Yamaha sound bar that has a ClearVoice function. It does improve the dialog but it’s still not as good as having the sound directly in my hears like the adapter provides. My wife has age related hearing loss (or spousal loss as I call it), and I purchased her a cheap pair of ear buds and she loves them. Even with the ClearVoice we had to turn the volume up no matter what to hear better. With my More1 and the ear buds we don’t. Hearing is different for all of us. We have to use what works for each of us. Glad you all have found what works well for each of you. I have the same type of setup that cvkemp has.

3 Likes
8

I am like cvkemp in that we have a good soundbar but it isn’t at all enough for me. I have the Bernafon HA’s from Costco that work good for me but watching tv is too “cloudy” to understand all the dialog. The music really overshadows the voices but with my app I can adjust it so the dialog is clearer,and the best part (to my DW ) is that we can mute the tv when she doesn’t want to hear it,goes to bed earlier ect. I take the tv adaptor with me when we go camping for the same reason, altho it took a while to come up with a way to hook it up on the camper tv,but after I got it rigged in the camper it works for the tv as well as the stereo in the camper too. I am hopeful that when it is time for new aids that I can still get some that will have a tv adaptor that works.

9

That is IMPRESSIVE!! We used to have a soundbar for better TV audio, but I also found speech just completely MUDDY - and that’s cuz the older soundbars didn’t have any kind of dialogue enhancement. Now why can’t someone take that kind of technology and put it into hearing aids?

Phonak’s Lumity Life aids are sold with a promise of enhanced speech clarity in QUIET surroundings, but it seems that boosting speech - and not ALL sounds in the same frequency - is still some kind of AI pipedream. I’m very intrigued that a TV soundbar maker has some kind of engineering wizardry going on to really make the speech POP.

My current media viewing is in a room with high ceilings and large windows - too much reverb. So I really enjoy and utterly RELY on my aids being able to stream audio from the TV. I can occasionally determine what’s been said more in a movie than hubs, but I still feel that hearing aids do NOT deliver speech comprehension in LOUD places. A directional mic, a tweak in algorithm, that’s about the best we can do for now.

2 Likes
10

@Venturer, that is how I would describe my old soundbar, except I would use the word “muddy” instead of “cloudy”. I was constantly fiddling with the settings - increasing centre channel, setting treble higher etc., but then that messes with other sounds, or sounds lousy when you switch to a different type of program, etc. With the new bar just setting the dialog enhancement to max seems to solve all my dialog issues, and I can simply adjust the bass, or the program used (Movie, Music, or 3D), to suit my preferences.

1 Like
11

I think that it is easier to put this new technology in soundbars for two reasons: 1) Size - you can pack a heck of a lot more audio processing power in a soundbar than a hearing aid. 2) Most recent TV and movies (since the late 1990’s?) have dolby digital 5.1 (surround sound), with a centre channel that is primarily used for speech. Probably a lot easier to work with that than with everything HA’s bring in! Although maybe HA makers should a a very directed and focused microphone in each HA, that only picks up sound exactly where you are looking (is this even possible?). That would be more like working with centre channel output.

In my old sound bar setting the centre channel to max (and my TV cable receiver sound to “Narrow Range” really helped with dialog, but then you lost most of the good sound effects. This new soundbar seems to pull the dialog forward without messing with all the other sounds, even as you increase volume. Some amazing technology there. Maybe HA manufacturers need to talk to speaker manufacturers occasionally?

3 Likes
12

It seems we are not the only people who have problems with speech on the TV.
There is a good explanation of what we are up against here https://youtu.be/VYJtb2YXae8

2 Likes
13

I am someone that if I have to use captions on TV or movies I will just read a book. I can’t concentrate on what is on the TV if I am reading the captions.

1 Like
14

It seems that speaker manufacturers have figured this out too, and are incorporating technology to reverse these effects, at least in terms of speech audibility.

15

This was the final thing that caused me to leap into trying this new soundbar. A few days before my soundbar purchase my wife and I watched a movie using closed captions for the first time. Great for understanding every word, but distracting! I want to be immersed in a movie (including the full sound spectrum, as I watch a lot of sci-fi), but for me captions distract from the basic movie experience - hard to focus on the visuals when I’m focused so much on reading the dialog.

2 Likes
16

I love the way my Oticon TV Adapter streams the audio to my aids. It seems that the speech content is what comes to my aids by streaming and the. I lower the microphone volume of my aids and I hear the background at a lower volume. I get the whole package of sounds it with the speech content amplified just enough above the background to be understood.

3 Likes
17

A tip (cheapish) that I don’t think has been mentioned. If you have an external mic for your HAs (a mic you clip on a companion’s lapel)–place it next to the audio output on your TV, sit back across the room, engage the proper program on your HAs, and pick up the audio much better than just “through the air”! Before I got a Bluetooth connection to the TV, I used this system quite successfully.

1 Like
18

This good for places that you’re visiting as well.

I’ve done the same.

19

I might try that soundbar. I used to have a 7.1 setup but with my hearing i blasted everyone else. I just got a new OLED for the bedroom and crave that rumble in action movies. My tv streamer does provide me clear dolby sound but missing that bass kick.

20

There are other options available, if you have space and/or money and want to go bigger. Polk makes a MagniFI Max AX which doesn’t cost a lot more, but takes up a lot more space. I didn’t look extensively for reviews on that one because it is too big for my setup, so I’m not sure if its voice enhancement is as good.

Sonos makes the Beam (Gen 2) which gets good reviews, but it ends up being way more expensive - same price as the Polk MagniFi Mini AX, but comes without a sub. Adding a sub gets you up the the price of my unit with surround (which I just bought!), and then it cost a whack more to add surround to the Sonos. Sonos also has only a 45 day return period.