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Sound not syncing between hearing aids TV streamer and TV sound bar

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I have a TV sound timing mis-match problem when using my bluetooth TV connector (Easy Line, by Sonova), when a sound bar is connected with my Sony TV. They don’t deliver sound at exactly the same time. Because my hearing aids also pick up sound from the soundbar, the combined sound that reaches my ears is muddled and particularly bad for understanding TV dialogue. I had to send the soundbar back. It’s frustrating because I want the sound bar to give some extra bass oomph when listening to music.

I suspect this sound mis-match is a problem for anyone who tries to use a TV streamer with a soundbar/home theatre. I first noticed the problem ten years ago, before I had hearing aids, but did plug earphones into the TV to improve dialogue. They synced very poorly with my Sony Home Theatre.

Any suggestions?

The first Bluetooth aids, as you mentioned in reference to aids you used a decade ago, were notorious for a brief lag when using streaming devices. In many cases, newer technology has done better. My 3-year-old ReSound aids with ReSound’s TV streamer, and my Sony TV with sound also going to an AV receiver and speaker system, do not have this mismatch. If I did have a mismatch I couldn’t fix, I’d just use one or the other, streamer or soundbar, but if someone else is trying to watch the same program with you, you may not be able to use your streamer without the soundbar.

Many newer, non-budget TVs and devices that can be connected to them, such as AV receivers which can be inserted between the sound bar and the TV, offer a way to adjust the sync between audio and video. If your Sony gear is now a decade old, this may not be possible.

The advice in the following article may not help you, either because your Sony TV may not allow this adjustment, or because the issue being addressed in the article is an audio-video mismatch when only one output device is being used. But take a look and try the changes to see what may be possible with your gear:

How To Fix Delay/Lag/Slow Response On Sony TV - Ready To DIY22

You can fix a gaming lag on your Sony TV by turning on the Game Mode setting or adjusting the picture and audio settings manually. Turn off any extra features such as noise reduction or motion enhancers. Utilize a separate audio system such as a...

Anything extra processing that the soundbar has to do increases any delay. This means that features called things like 3D Sound, Spatial Audio, Virtual Surround etc. will increase the amount of delay and therefore make any echo worse.

To minimise this effect with any setup the soundbar should be set to Standard or similar. Sometimes the Cinema or Dialogue settings will also be fine.

It’s only really systems like Phonak’s TV Connector that provide next to no delay or echo when listening with others.
Hopefully the next generation of hearing aids will include Bluetooth 5.x which has much lower delay but that’s not much help right now!

To complicate matters, the audio coming out of my ‘LG’ TV set is delayed compared to the audio coming out of my cable TV ‘Set Top Box’ .
And then on the cable news channels the audio and video is out of sync from some remote locations.

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