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shelbyjet
Contributor I
June 17, 2018
Answered

Hearing Impaired - TV Solution

My father is ageing and as such, losing is having trouble with hearing dialogue on TV. If he has the volume at the level he can hear, it is too loud for my mother. Can Sonos be configured so he has, say a playbar and a second speaker that mirrors the playbar sound he can have by his chair? At present he has a Bose system, but as a 5.1 system, the rear speakers are used for surround sound and do not contain all sound elements he needs. Secondly, I would ask if it is easy to have the sound controlled through a generic remote - he would struggle using his iPhone or iPad to get his sound up and running. Hope someone can help, the stores I have been to have zero idea for a solution - I would not have thought we are pioneers here... Thank in advance.
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    Airgetlam
    AirgetlamAnswer
    June 17, 2018
    I had a similar issue with my father. I ended up pushing the TV sound to an amplifier that drove a set of headphones for him.

    Normally speaking, a grouped speaker might be an answer, placed directly next to him, but the difficulty lies in the way that the Sonos system deals with surround speakers versus grouped speakers. Surrounds are on the lower latency 5Ghz band, which is short distance. Any grouped speakers are on the 2.4ghz band to provide longer distance, since in normal situations there is no guaranty the grouped speaker is in the same room. This causes an extra delay for appropriate buffering, which causes the grouped speakers to be slightly behind the PLAYBAR and surrounds, and would likely create a “stadium” like effect.

    I doubt that there is enough demand for this kind of thing for Sonos to invest in changing their base technology, but I will say that it has popped up a few times over the last couple of years, and since Sonos doesn’t tell us in advance what they’re working on, generally speaking, who knows.
    Bruce
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    1 reply

    Airgetlam
    AirgetlamAnswer
    June 17, 2018
    I had a similar issue with my father. I ended up pushing the TV sound to an amplifier that drove a set of headphones for him.

    Normally speaking, a grouped speaker might be an answer, placed directly next to him, but the difficulty lies in the way that the Sonos system deals with surround speakers versus grouped speakers. Surrounds are on the lower latency 5Ghz band, which is short distance. Any grouped speakers are on the 2.4ghz band to provide longer distance, since in normal situations there is no guaranty the grouped speaker is in the same room. This causes an extra delay for appropriate buffering, which causes the grouped speakers to be slightly behind the PLAYBAR and surrounds, and would likely create a “stadium” like effect.

    I doubt that there is enough demand for this kind of thing for Sonos to invest in changing their base technology, but I will say that it has popped up a few times over the last couple of years, and since Sonos doesn’t tell us in advance what they’re working on, generally speaking, who knows.
    Bruce
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