Chris,
I am not sure you had mentioned connecting other TV's to your Sonos system in
your previous mail. Can you tell me what brands of TV's you've connected and
had the exact same issue? Also, which part of the sigmal is coming out loud, is
it speech or screen reader?
Jo
-----Original Message-----
From: blindcordcutters-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blindcordcutters-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Christopher Gilland
Sent: Wednesday, December 1, 2021 2:18 PM
To: blindcordcutters@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blindcordcutters] Re: Ridiculously irritating! Problem with streaming
hardware
Joe,
I'm not meaning this rudely, but I kind of did! stay on point first off.
Second off, no offense, but this is happening on any TV make and model
I've tried with, it's not just the Toshiba TV, so putting the blaim
there, quite bluntly speaking is ridiculous. Could it be my TV? Yeah,
maybe. I'm not discounting it, but given it's happening on literally any
TV I try using of any make/model, you have to wonder. And, considering
it's seeming to happen to other people on this list who don't even have
the same make/model TV, you might want to rethink. I appreciate your
response, please don't misinterpret this, but I just don't see how the
TV is the issue here unless there's some berried setting somewhere which
is universal somehow across all devices which needs to be set a certain
way that I'm unaware of. I'd say that's probably more likely the
possibility. But nonetheless, I digress.
Chris.
On 12/1/2021 2:13 PM, jovian3@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Hey Chris,
Here are my 2 cents from a fellow engineer. I can't say I've retained
everything you wrote below (please try to stay on point), but it seems to me
like the problem is probably with your Toshiba TV. IMHO, Amazon does not make
superior consumer products and neither does Toshiba. So what do you think is
going to happen when they join forces on a TV? Your going to have issues
like the one you are describing. There is a slight chance that the problem is
with your Sonos system, but I would be very surprised if that turned out to
be the case.
Best
Jo
-----Original Message-----
From: blindcordcutters-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blindcordcutters-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Christopher Gilland
Sent: Wednesday, December 1, 2021 8:44 AM
To: blindcordcutters@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blindcordcutters] Ridiculously irritating! Problem with streaming
hardware
OK, I've been tollerating this crap, excuse the word, for long enough
now, and quite frankly am growing sick and tired of it! Hopefully, one
of you guys can help me trouble shoot this, and pinpoint down what in
the bejesus is going on.
As many of you know, I'm not at all here to toot my own horn, but I
definitely am extremely tech savvy, and am way beyond your average joe
shmo level user of most tech products both blindness and mainstream..
That's not to say I know everything though.
So, I have the first generation Sonos Beam, which I have pared with 2
rear Play 1 speakers. I don't have a play sub, although Sonos support
tells me that absolutely isn't the issue. All that would do, they say is
adds lots more low end base. Being I'm an audio engineer, I would tend
to believe that statement. I think what Sonos is saying is definitely
factually correct.
I have set things to enhanced speech turned on, but the problem I'm
about to describe doesn't get fixed by doing so..
My Beam and other surround speakers are connected to my 32 inch Toshiba
Fire TV which is updated to the most recent software update of TV
FireOS. This TV was the one sold by places like Best Buy back around
2019, so if there is a newer generation model, I wanna be very clear
exactly the one I have. Anyway, the zspeakers are connected via HDMI
ARC, although even when I turn on the internal speakers, and shut off
the Sonos system, I still have the issue.
So what's happening is, my speech is always tons tons louder than the
actual TV content. The only exception is Netflix when used with the
Apple TV 4K 5th generation. At which point, speech and everything else
goes into surround 5.1 mode, and basically everything, TV content, and
also speech itself gets really really freaking loud, and I then have to
back off my Sonos speakers, or I will blow myself across the room.
All other audio sounds fine. Like, if I play my Windows PC through the
TV on HDMI3, then JAWS or NVDA sound fine in perportion to any other
audio from things like Reaper, WinAmp, etc when rerouted through the ARC
port to my beam. Again though, I don't think this is a Sonos issue, as
even with that not in the equasion, if I play content directly from the
TV itself through any app installed directly on the TV itself like
Netflix, Prime Video, Youtube, Youtube TV, Disney Plus, etc, Voiceview
is way way way louder. If I turn down the speech volume independently of
turning down the TV content volume with the actual volume buttons on the
remote control, yeah, the speech will go down, but so does the video
volume. So regardless if I turn down just speech alone, or the over all
volume, doesn't matter. They're still way way out of perportion balance.
I had this same issue when we had Spectrum TV, and even when I had
DirecTV Streaming before cancelling and recently switching to Youtube
TV. Why I did that is for another discussion entirely. I won't go there.
I've switched HDMI cords, did no good. I've switched sources around
putting what was on HDMI2 on HDMI3, and vice versa with no luck.
I've gone into the TV's audio settings, Nothing at first glance seems to
be an issue. Everything looks set correctly. I've not only power cycled
both my Sonos system and my TV, but I've even unplugged both, waited
about 3 minutes, then plugged back in and restarted the devices. No
good. The difference in volume is so out of sync that in order for me to
comfortably hear the TV audio, I gotta literally crank my Sonos speakers
to about volume 7 or 8, and considering that they go to a max of 10,
that should tell ya something. So then when any speech comes through,
yowel! Ouchy! ouchy! It's excrutiatingly painful. Never mind the fact if
it's the middle of the night.
The odd thing is, I bluetoothed a set of headphones to the TV, and the
problem then went away immediately.
I did look on my Apple TV, at the settings, but they're also all
correct. Plus, I don't think this is a streaming device issue hardware
wise that I know of at least. I say this as it's happening with my Apple
TV, my Samsung blueray/DVD player, the TV itself, my old DirectTV
Streaming Android box, The Spectrum 210 Worldbox STB when we had them,
my Rocu Ultra back when I had the thing hooked up, God knows now where
that thing is! Even when using my Chromecast, and casting something to
the TV, I have the issue. Even airplaying to my Apple TV over Airplay
V2.0, the issue occurs.
I should add, when bluetoothing and things went away, I wasn't using
anything special like Airpods or Air maxes. This was just a regular set
of high end Sony bluetooth noise cancelling headphones that I've had
since November of 2018.
I've factory reset all these devices, which neither did any good.
This just doesn't make sense! I could see it, if it were one device
being the culprit, but it's not, that's the thing. This is happening
regardless.
Before anyone says, Chris, just turn up in the Sonos app your back
surround speakers, don't go there! That's not going to solve this.
That's just gonna make the back speakers over all louder. Disabling
voice enhancer doesn't help either, and no. Night mode isn't on, but
even if it were, it wouldn't help. that's just gonna reduce loud booms,
bangs, etc over all. That isn't going to make speech be balanced with
perportion to video audio across things globally, so let's not beat a
dead horse here. We already know that isn't going to help.
Honestly, I'm stumped... like, really! really really stumped!
This has made listening to anything from my TV mearly impossible. The
only way around this I've so far seen is to temporarily disable speech,
then turn the volume full blast almost up all the way, then hope and
pray to God on high that I remember afterward before re-enabling speech
to turn that m effer down! w'w'w'wayyyyyy! down.
I'm open to anything at this point of suggestions to things I've not
tried nor considered above. Right now, I mainly listen to video
programming from either my phone, or my iPad, as it's the only way I can
get anything of good decent audio level without blowing my ears out.
Chris.
