Sound on my new radio is muffled....

[😎 Mighty Wannabe ✅]

On 10/1/2023 8:10 PM, micky wrote:

In sci.electronics.repair, on Fri, 22 Sep 2023 17:11:54 -0400, ? Mighty
Wannabe ? <@.> wrote:

On 9/22/2023 4:35 PM, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Fri, 22 Sep 2023 15:19:40 -0400, ? Mighty Wannabe
? <@.> wrote:

On 9/22/2023 1:42 PM, micky wrote:
I bought a $230 wifi radio that is impressive in many ways, but the
problem I have is that the sound sounds muffled

Maybe it\'s okay for music. I haven\'t listened to much music, but for
talk it sounds muffled. Like literally they are talking through some
sort of muffle. I don\'t have this problem with 5 other table radios.

Is the problem that there is too much bass? If not that, what?

It has equalizer settings so I changed from default and various kinds of
music to \"talk\". I didnt\' hear any change.

So I went to custom, which has 6 frequency ranges, and over time, I\'ve
lowered the lowest 4 ranges to the minimum and raised the top one to the
max, and the one in between almost to the max. This helped at first,
but future changes were smaller and I didn\'t see addtional help.

I can still understand if I make the sound one or two steps louder, but
then it\'s louder than I want.

Is there an audio ng that\'s not dormant that I can post too. alt.audio
and alt.audio.pro had gone 3 years without posts.
You might have \"Loudness\" on, which raises the low and the high, and
makes human voice almost inaudible (muffled). The \"Loudness\" setting
would tire me out quickly when I listen to people talk.
Thanks. I\'ll check the settings again but I dont\' think it has Loudness.
\"Loudness\" is a button on many stereo system.
I know but I checked and I was right. This one doesn\'t have it.

If you have \"Radio\" preset, then use it. It is close to \"Telephone\", but
\"Telephone\" cuts out both the high and low frequencies. It\'s perfect for
listening to human voice.

These are the screen grabs of the equalizer in my computer. I have
posted them to a free image hosting site:

\"Telephone\" preset:

https://ibb.co/SmhMdWh


\"Radio\" preset:

https://ibb.co/f8r8qNv

I have been playing with Windows since the beginning of time. I found a
very good software equalizer (free software) in my Windows 10/11. It has
many equalizer presets. My favourite preset is \"Telephone\", which raises
I doubt if it will have Telephone because it knows it\'s a radio. PC\'s
do everything. But I will try the other settings, Jazz, classical...
whatever. Maybe one is like telephone.
That equalizer software has graphical user interface so you can modify
the presets. The only preset that looks like \"Telephone\" is \"Radio\".

The \"Radio\" present raises only the human vocal frequency range, while
\"Telephone\" preset raises the human vocal frequency range plus tapering
the high end and low end frequencies all the way to  -30 dB.

the frequency range of human voices and depresses the high and low. I
can listen to Tucker Carson and Alex Jones all day.
I\'m sure.

Without that software equalizer, the high and low in the frequency
spectrum would tire me out quickly. Interesting enough, even with the
\"Telephone\" preset when I listen to music, I can hear the lyrics very
clearly, and the music still remains enjoyable.

 

[three_jeeps]

On Wednesday, September 27, 2023 at 3:22:28 PM UTC-4, Bob F wrote:

On 9/27/2023 11:05 AM, micky wrote:
In sci.electronics.repair, on Mon, 25 Sep 2023 10:38:13 +0100, Martin
Brown <\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 22/09/2023 18:42, micky wrote:
I bought a $230 wifi radio that is impressive in many ways, but the
problem I have is that the sound sounds muffled

Maybe it\'s okay for music. I haven\'t listened to much music, but for
talk it sounds muffled. Like literally they are talking through some
sort of muffle. I don\'t have this problem with 5 other table radios.

Is the problem that there is too much bass? If not that, what?

Possibly. Is there a reflex port on it somewhere?

No. I don\'t think so.

Stuffing that with foam might improve things a bit. Somehow
extra/excessive bass seems to be a selling point for radios in that
sort of price range. It does nothing for intelligibility.

Interesting.

It has equalizer settings so I changed from default and various kinds of
music to \"talk\". I didnt\' hear any change.

Depending on how badly their equalizer mangles the sound you might be on
a no win battle with this thing.

Well, here is the end of the first chapter:

I\'m still going to talk to the manufacturer about what equalizer
settings work best, or any physical improvement like changing the
speakers, or stuffing with foam,

but two nights ago I bought a patch cable for the L & R Line OUts that
plugs into the AUX on the rdio above it, and now the sound is pretty
good, certainly good enough for me (who has a tin ear which is why it\'s
surprising this radio wasn\'t good enough for me.) The cable merges L &
R so even though I paid extra for stereo speakers, it\'s monaural.

In addition, this means I can leave the internet radio on all night,
with the sound turned down to zero, and use the Sleep function of the
second radio, so it will turn off after an hour or two. On the
internet radio, the Sleep function** disables almost all the controls
and doesn\'t let me watch the name of the songs being played or see the
graphic that comes with each station or each song. That\'s just
entertaining enough to keep my attention but not enough to keep me
awake. **It just displays the time, which is boring.

The second radio, the Sangean WR-22, has very little tone control, but I
pressed a button my mistake and found that 3 years ago when I got it, I
had set the bass to -3 and the treble to +1. Simple, small changes, and
I\'ve been happy with that.


Back to the internet radio using its own speakers, I\'ve only played a
few songs. The music is probably okay, but the lyrics are muffled,
muddled, or muddy. So even they are better through the other radio.

I know I\'m not following the advice of people who said to send it back
but I didn\'t find a better replacement, also with presets. Maybe there
is one but I\'m tired of looking.

Thanks all. I couldn\'t have done it withou\' you.
It still sounds like the \"radio\" is seriously defective or a piece of
junk, that you are kludging to make it \"usable\". I would send it back in
a moment.

Exactly!!! Send it back and get a new one. With all this dancing around with various connection configurations (some of which raise more questions than answers), you could have been enjoying another radio or found a better alternative.
If you send it back, the supplier will never tell you what \'problems\' the device had. Their easy soln is to send you a new one. I suggest making some sort of mark on the original unit (in a very inconspicuous place) so you can determine if they sent the original radio back to you or a different unit. (I\'ve personally experienced this).

IMHO, trying to connect the audio to an external speaker via BT is a crap shoot. A lot of BT devices have lousy implementations....won\'t pair with some devices, spins forever when attempting to make a connection, dropped connections, the reconnect feature doesn\'t work, lossy audio, etc.
If I am troubleshooting an audio problem, nothing beats a hardwired connection.

 

[Peter W.]

I am watching this conversation with increasing sadness, consternation and amazement. As a collector of things-radio for a very long time, I have examples from 1919 through 2007, including coffin-box home-brews to $5.99 WalMart hand-held portables (by the washer/dryer for my wife to use). Gems include a Zenith shutter/robot dial, a Grundig Satellit 700, & YB-500, GE super-radio and others. Countries-of-origin include Czechoslovakia, Turkey (!), Russia, Portugal, France, England, Russia, Germany, US, China, Japan and others.

Given that I have sufficient grounds for comparison - anything that sounded \"muffled\", especially purchased new, would be unceremoniously returned to the seller without delay. Life is simply too short for that noise.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

 

[Hiram T Schwantz]

On 22 Sep 2023 18:36:58 GMT, rbowman posted for all of us to digest...

On Fri, 22 Sep 2023 13:42:01 -0400, micky wrote:

I bought a $230 wifi radio that is impressive in many ways, but the
problem I have is that the sound sounds muffled

Did you take it out of the Amazon box first?

+1 Good one!

--
Hiram

 

[Hiram T Schwantz]

On 22 Sep 2023 23:00:58 GMT, rbowman posted for all of us to digest...

On Fri, 22 Sep 2023 15:10:51 -0400, Retirednoguilt wrote:

Time for a visit to an audiologist. If you don\'t use hearing aids, you
may need them. If you use them, the settings may need to be tweaked. A
few years ago, I thought something had gone wrong with my stereo
equipment, either the speakers or the receiver.

Considering two (out of thirteen) of the Amazon reviews complained about
the sound and one said a speaker was DOA I\'d lean toward the problem not
being with micky\'s ears.

It\'s what between them?

--
Hiram