Sound bars and ear buds

I’m ignorant of these matters.

Due to her cancer, my wife spends much time in bed. Like many, she finds it hard to pick up dialogue on TV dramas and other talk shows. I’m told a quality sound bar is the solution but the bedroom is poorly configured to attach it to the wall and the small TV does not lend itself to a freestanding sound bar.

Instead I am wondering whether ear buds could be a solution. I’m told the TV has to have Bluetooth (I’ll check). However the reviews of earbuds comment almost exclusively on enhancing the quality of music and not the spoken word. Do they improve speech audibility?

I’d be grateful to hear opinions and also other solutions. Thanks.

 

Have you tried looking through the TV's settings menu?

For example, on my LG lcd TV, there are settings for sound mode presets and a function called ClearVoice II.

The sound presets alter the bass and treble levels of the audio in order to enhance the sound - this can also be adjusted manually on my TV instead of using a preset.

 

As far as I know the earbuds will just amplify whatever sound is sent to them - it's the sound source that would modify the sound so it would be a setting on the TV as @misterQ suggests.

I also have an LG TV with about 6 different settings for Music, Movies etc and Clear Voice II which does help a lot.
On top of that there's various Dolby and other settings that I have no idea about.

There may well be some brands that can be tuned to the user preference via an app.

But they would all need a Bluetooth enabled TV

 

Sure you can add Bluetooth to a TV with an adapter, but a quicker, better and cheaper solution might be to get a different TV with better audio. I find TV audio really rubbish and am often asking the OH "what did they say?" . Not important to us, but I can see it being so for some. We do have a Sonos sound bar and have a compatible speaker. I've tried this connected over wifi with it sitting behind me and the sound/voice is great. So I think it is possible to have options whereby you don't need too much to connect. My investigation into buds found a big cost variation and therefore think quality varies. So you might want to look to try some out with someone you know that has such.

 

An alternative that we use due to the poor speakers in the tv is using Wired Ear buds or if you prefer lightweight headphones.
Like most things you get what you pay for, buds or headphones, but even with cheap ones the clarity compared to the tvs speakers is so much better for music or speach.

We prefer the ones that more or less just rest in the ear opening rather than the rubber bung type of buds.

Some even come with a volume control on the cable, you can even get little units that allow two people to share the same tv headphone connection, each with their own volume control,

Most TVs have a 3.5mm headphone output socket and if needed, you can purchase 3.5mm extension cables of various lengths quiet cheaply.

Don't forget that the bluetooth buds need to be charged up every so often, which can be a pain if you forget and they are flat when you really want to listen to something !

 

Thanks for your advice, everyone. We have bitten the bullet and gone for the Bluetooth earbuds option. After looking at Which reviews we chose Sennheiser ones which got an excellent rating and were particularly recommended for speech clarity. Normally £230 - £250, they were reduced in the current Amazon Prime sale to £130.

 

Don't think you will be disappointed with the Sennheisers, they are a very good make, we use them for our main headphones.