• The degradation of TV audio was inevitable once flatscreen monitors started to get really thin and big. We now sit farther than ever from our screens, which leads to higher pitched dialog getting quieter (since it attenuates faster than low pitched sounds - think about how you can hear a car stereo from around the block, but can’t hear your neighbor’s baby crying). In addition, our quest to eliminate speaker grills has led to designs that either point speakers straight down (obviously bad), or use complex sound piping to reorient sound through small openings (sorta bad).

    When you add in the fact that most TV and films are now designed explicitly for surround sound and/or good headphones, you can imagine how bad things get for most people.