I love my LG C5 OLED 65-inch 4K TV, and I also hate its sound. There, I said it. One of the best, sharpest TVs I have ever owned, with stunning clarity and inky blacks, stumbles badly in the sound department – but then I bet that doesn’t surprise you.
Audio on today’s best TVs is notoriously bad, and the assumption is that you’ll ignore it, and simply buy a soundbar or surround system to make up for the set’s acoustic deficits.
Earlier this week, I was in the mood for a good comfort-watch. For me, that means a superhero movie, and, if I haven’t watched 1978’s Superman recently, the natural choice is Christopher Nolan’s exemplary Batman Begins. I love this movie, from the brilliant cinematography to non-stop but realistic action, snappy dialogue, and high stakes – it’s about as good as Batman gets. It’s also on one of the best streaming services, HBO Max.
It’s not the speakers you have on the inside, it’s what you do with them
LG’s C5 has a bunch of audio presets: Standard, Cinema, AI Sound Pro, and Clear Voice Pro (there’s also Sports, Music, and Game Optimizer, which are all less germane here). I was already in Cinema Mode, which may have accounted for some of the booming background effects, so I switched to Clear Voice Pro, hoping it would add some clarity to the speech.
The result was awful. Voices were sharp to the point of being almost painful to listen to. They had a weird, unnatural echo, and the background sound was diminished into muddy uselessness.
Standard mode was generally flat, and also did nothing to solve my dialogue issues. With the exception of the algorithmic AI overcorrections, most of these sound modes are, in my estimation, equivalent to sound EQs you got on your old portable CD players, raising and lowering bass and treble to suit certain music or audio styles. They weren’t earth-shattering then, and are not now.
As I sat there in some frustration, and the 14th ad started to run in the middle of my HBO Max movie experience, my son asked why I was suffering so much, and suggested I find our Nolan Batman Trilogy Blu-ray set and watch it on disc.
It was a solid suggestion. First of all, the image quality was considerably better. Second, no commercials. The audio was about the same, though.
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Is sound bad to teach us how to buy a sound bar?
I know, why not just buy a soundbar and stop complaining? Well, there is the principle of the thing. I paid well over $1,500 for this TV set, and wonder why I need to plunk down $400 or more for a decent soundbar and subwoofer.
There is another, more practical problem. When I installed my 65-inch OLED on my wall, I positioned it at the optimal height for couch viewing; no craning my neck for me. We then bought a cabinet to put under it, but when we got it, we found that the furniture was slightly taller than we expected. The result is that a standard soundbar right under the TV (even one just a few inches tall) might partially block the bottom edge of my LG C5 OLED.
A utility belt won’t solve this
So, yes, I’m stuck, and that’s partially a problem of my own making. And yet, why does the sound have to suck so much? AI audio manipulation is clearly not going to help, and, despite what these companies tell you, they have not solved the audio issues inherent in ultra-thin and light (just 36.6lbs) TV sets.
Because this is not simply an issue with one beloved superhero classic. Virtually anything I watch on any streaming platform is a trial of epic audio proportions. We make it louder and louder, until we finally give in and switch to closed captions.
My thought is that I need to find an ultra-low profile soundbar that somehow still manages to deliver crisp, clear dialogue. The LG Sound Suite H7 soundbar, which is just 2.5 inches tall, might work, but it’s also $999. Seriously, why must I pay another $1,000 for the sound experience that should have come right out of my brand-new TV?
Color me frustrated. Perhaps this is a job for the Dark Knight.
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lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)
