Terrible TV sound?

[boater sam]

Perhaps its my age. Or my hearing aid. Or my TV and amp/speakers? I have tried different combinations etc. 

But I don't think so.
 
The sound on many TV programs seems to be indistinct, muffled voices drowned by the background music and sound effects. Drama programs in particular seem to be most affected. News programs are very clear and understandable.

Professor T on ITV tonight was terrible. The female actors voices in particular were very distorted and muffled.

Is it just me?

[peter scott]

It's not just you Sam. I frequently need to turn on subtitles to hear conversations. Why broadcasters mix in so much background noise with commentators is beyond me. I did find that Kirsty Wark's sound quality on Newsnight was very poor but other presenters on Newsnight were not and Kirsty's problem only appeared to be when she was in the Newsnight studio. I complained by email and was quite surprised by their response (which was good).

Peter

[Mark Hennessy]

The clip on lapel mics used for TV presenters are pretty poor. They are omnidirectional so pick up more of the room acoustics than a directional mic would, which only adds to the problem - TV studios almost always have terrible acoustics because they need to look good (shiny, hard, reflective surfaces, giant TV sets, painted concrete floors, concrete walls and ceilings with minimal acoustic treatment - and of course, TV studios are getting smaller and smaller). With a bit of judicious equalisation you can normally makes things sound reasonable, but it's often hard to do that given all the other pressures of live TV.

Last time I watched Newsnight, I noted that they were using a conventional cardioid mic for the guests on a small table stand. Obviously to minimise close personal contact given the current situation. Before I even noticed the mic on camera, the vastly improved sound quality of the guests leapt out at me. You might get away with lapel mics if everyone is using them, but a traditional mic really shows up how poor the lapel mics can be.

Peter, I'd be interested to see the reply you got from them. I'm doing a bit of digging into this at the moment.

Aside from that example, there's countless reasons why TV sound gets so many complaints. I find it interesting to watch stuff produced 30+ years ago to see how that compares - generally, much, much better. A lot has changed in programme making over the decades, caused by obvious financial pressures.

Today, most TV news packages are mixed by the journalist rather than a technical operator, and usually on headphones - which makes a big difference when deciding the relative levels of dialogue and background music or "fx".

If it's drama, the technical crew are usually freelancers, and much as they want to do the best they possibly can, it's hard for them to make too much fuss for fear of being remembered as awkward and losing out on work in the future.

Some actors aren't used to speaking up on set, as they dub the dialogue on later in an ADR session. Of course, there's rarely the budget for that in TV, so the result is complaints about mumbling, etc. Again, what can the poor (freelance) sound engineer do about that?

Needless to say, equipment at home has changed beyond all recognition. 30 years ago, NICAM was the big thing, and lots of TV sets could put a home stereo system to shame. Even non-NICAM sets could be pretty reasonable - I fondly remember my old Philips K30, and my uncle had a TX10 with stereo speakers (pre-NICAM, of course) and an elaborate audio section (and light show) - though the 4" speaker in the K30 was better than the elliptical Goodmans units used by Ferguson (I made up an adaptor plate from 3mm hardboard to fit it to my TX10 - happy days!). We all know how bad modern TV sound systems are, and the reasons why. I use a hi-fi amp and a pair of LS3/5As with my TV, so at least I know the problem is not my end!

Of course, none of us are getting any younger. But I do think that trying material from back in the day is a good way to eliminate our equipment and our hearing from the equation. Over the last year or so, I've re-watched a lot of old TV from our DVD collection, such as Yes Minister and Morse, and it's all generally pretty good - and even when it's less than good, speech intelligibility is retained. Mentioning Morse, it's interesting that some episodes of Lewis were quite bad in that regard - mostly because of Lawrence Fox not speaking up (I'll resist saying something obvious about him, as it'll be a bit political!).

It's fair to say that the BBC gets a lot of complaints about speech intelligibility. It's hard to see how things will improve given the climate today, but I keep on banging the drum...

But it's not all bad - some things can be really good today.

[Refugee]

One of the problems is that the sound engineer has the script in front of him and fails to realise that the viewers at home do not have a copy.
They just pump up the volume of all the other baggage without realising that the speech is being drowned out.
Why the hell did they introduce digital TV without the sound effects, music and speech on three streams with faders on the TV set.
They managed it on computer games that ran on 386 processors and I find it bitterly disappointing that it was not implemented on digital TV.

[Craig]

I run the optical feed from the ridiculously thin OLED tele into my streamer, and thence to the stereo system. There is no problem with speech intelligibility that way. The main thing that gets me is that back in the day, broadcast engineers kept the volume level exceeding well matched from channel to channel. Whereas now there is often 10dB difference at least, with a remote control volume battle when channel hopping.

[peter scott]

Peter, I'd be interested to see the reply you got from them. I'm doing a bit of digging into this at the moment.

Hi Mark,

I didn't receive a reply other than a non-specific acknowledgement. I had noticed over a period of months that Kirsty Wark's sound within the Newsnight studio was terrible but other presenters were perfectly acceptable. For example when Nicholas Watt was on the other side of the table from her. I also noticed that when Kirsty Wark was interviewing in other circumstances not in the studio, that her sound was much better.

What surprised me was that only a day after my email Kirsty's studio sound was significantly improved.

Peter

[boater sam]

The clip on lapel mics used for TV presenters are pretty poor. They are omnidirectional so pick up more of the room acoustics than a directional mic would, which only adds to the problem - TV studios almost always have terrible acoustics because they need to look good (shiny, hard, reflective surfaces, giant TV sets, painted concrete floors, concrete walls and ceilings with minimal acoustic treatment - and of course, TV studios are getting smaller and smaller). With a bit of judicious equalisation you can normally makes things sound reasonable, but it's often hard to do that given all the other pressures of live TV.

Last time I watched Newsnight, I noted that they were using a conventional cardioid mic for the guests on a small table stand. Obviously to minimise close personal contact given the current situation. Before I even noticed the mic on camera, the vastly improved sound quality of the guests leapt out at me. You might get away with lapel mics if everyone is using them, but a traditional mic really shows up how poor the lapel mics can be.

Peter, I'd be interested to see the reply you got from them. I'm doing a bit of digging into this at the moment.

Aside from that example, there's countless reasons why TV sound gets so many complaints. I find it interesting to watch stuff produced 30+ years ago to see how that compares - generally, much, much better. A lot has changed in programme making over the decades, caused by obvious financial pressures.

Today, most TV news packages are mixed by the journalist rather than a technical operator, and usually on headphones - which makes a big difference when deciding the relative levels of dialogue and background music or "fx".

If it's drama, the technical crew are usually freelancers, and much as they want to do the best they possibly can, it's hard for them to make too much fuss for fear of being remembered as awkward and losing out on work in the future.

Some actors aren't used to speaking up on set, as they dub the dialogue on later in an ADR session. Of course, there's rarely the budget for that in TV, so the result is complaints about mumbling, etc. Again, what can the poor (freelance) sound engineer do about that?

Needless to say, equipment at home has changed beyond all recognition. 30 years ago, NICAM was the big thing, and lots of TV sets could put a home stereo system to shame. Even non-NICAM sets could be pretty reasonable - I fondly remember my old Philips K30, and my uncle had a TX10 with stereo speakers (pre-NICAM, of course) and an elaborate audio section (and light show) - though the 4" speaker in the K30 was better than the elliptical Goodmans units used by Ferguson (I made up an adaptor plate from 3mm hardboard to fit it to my TX10 - happy days!). We all know how bad modern TV sound systems are, and the reasons why. I use a hi-fi amp and a pair of LS3/5As with my TV, so at least I know the problem is not my end!

Of course, none of us are getting any younger. But I do think that trying material from back in the day is a good way to eliminate our equipment and our hearing from the equation. Over the last year or so, I've re-watched a lot of old TV from our DVD collection, such as Yes Minister and Morse, and it's all generally pretty good - and even when it's less than good, speech intelligibility is retained. Mentioning Morse, it's interesting that some episodes of Lewis were quite bad in that regard - mostly because of Lawrence Fox not speaking up (I'll resist saying something obvious about him, as it'll be a bit political!).

It's fair to say that the BBC gets a lot of complaints about speech intelligibility. It's hard to see how things will improve given the climate today, but I keep on banging the drum...

But it's not all bad - some things can be really good today.

I knew that you would have the answer Mark, thanks for the reassurance that I am not falling apart yet.
Sam.

[colly0410]

Annoys me when you watch a documentary about the fire brigade/police etc & there's loud background music so you can't hear what the cop's & bad lad's said to each other. I've often rewound it & still can't make out what was said...

[Stockden]

My solution to just this problem was to get one of these:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ZVOX-Dialogue-C...FNW8&psc=1

Initially I was a bit dubious about the cost but it's made a huge difference and we now wouldn't be without it.

Hugh

[Pye Man]

I have a lot of this trouble with speech radio too. My ears are old but they ain’t so bad. The other day I was listing to a discussion on either Times Radio or Radio 4 and I couldn’t figure out what was being said by some of the participants. And that is before interviews over the phone with the inevitable loss of mobile phone signal, bubbling mud garbling, internet delay and all the rest. Then there is the habit of playing music under speech – especially sports – to up the drama. The latter was annoying me years ago but it seems to be a 5 Live thing in the main and I’ve given up that station (and probably infects commercial sports stations too but I don’t listen to them either).

Given the make-do situation of the last eighteen months, viewers and listeners have got used to lower production values and thus these will never go back to what they were. If the journalist/presenter, etc., can hack the technical op’s job then that’s one less person you need. As a man who had run a manufacturing business for forty years – and seen plenty of rivals close down – once said to me: “You deliver the lowest quality the customers will accept.”