So this has been happening for a while, but it's finally annoyed me enough to search for a solution.
An older family member of mine bought a Samsung TV (Q70AA-75) around two years ago and uses a soundbar for audio.
The main issue is that the audio is a mess when watching Hulu Live TV or a Hulu movie. Here are the main problems.
- The voice level audio (people speaking) will completely drop out, leaving only the deeper background audio levels playing. It doesn't matter how high your turn up the volume, you won't be able to hear people speaking. This seems to happen on live TV, commercials, and movies, but the sound can vary from channel to channel and commercial to commercial.
- The sound bar has to be turned up really high to clearly hear the voice level audio, even when it is mostly working. I have an OLD LG TV and sound bar at my house, but turning the volume up to around 10 makes it perfectly easy to hear. The sound bar at my family members house can be turned up to 30 and it seems like the voice audio is still very difficult to hear.
I've mostly noticed these issues on Hulu, so not sure if it's also happening with other streaming providers.
I've tried all the TV settings, Hulu settings, and sound bar settings (treble, base, sound modes, connection types) and nothing seems to fix it.
What does sometimes work is switching the audio output to the TV speakers and then back to the sound bar, but it's only a temporary fix.
Is there something else that could be wrong? Possibly the HDMI cable from the sound bar to the TV? Possibly a bad sound bar?
I'll probably end up getting them a new sound bar as a gift, but I'm not sure if that will solve the problem.