Re: Difficulty hearing dialogue on television

Mason Barge <masonbarge@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I've been noticing more trouble understanding dialogue on television,
especially on DVR but on live cable as well.

I thought this could be my tv, or my hearing getting bad. But in another
thread I noticed that a lot of other people had even more trouble than I did
hearing a line on "Lost" last night (I could at least make it out on the
second try).

Is this something to do with digital compression, maybe? My wife, who is 15
years younger, has the same problem.

I do have poor hearing, so I've asked many people much younger than
I about this. They all agree that it's a problem.

What I hear, with my hearing aids, is what we used to call
background music and noise so boosted that they cover the dialog. I've
blamed this on poorly trained sound editors but I've wondered at the
same time if it had something to do with targeting the sound to HD and
then playing electronic games to make a sound track for analog TVs.
Another responder has made the same point.

Even if that's true, they should be doing a better job with those
electronic games. There are a lot of analog TVs still around.

I've also noticed a lot of actors with poor diction, as noted by
yet another responder. Finally, and this is my problem, I get lost when
the dialog goes to two- and three-word phrases being tossed around. My
hearing isn't terrible, just poor, the usual loss of highs with
advancing age, but I seem to have also lost the ability to process what
I do hear unless I have a reasonable amount of verbal context.

Charlie
--
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night.
God said "Let Newton be," and all was light. - Pope
.

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