GoKawiilAll TV speakers are bad. They're not just bad, but even with most of the best TVs, they're facing the wrong way: backward. While there are some TVs with front-facing or behind-the-screen speakers, even these don't sound great. Not only does this mean lifeless, boring sound quality, but it can also make dialogue hard to understand, especially when there's a lot of other audio. As TVs get thinner and thinner, one casualty is increasingly mediocre audio performance.
There's no setting that will magically transform your TV's audio into movie theater sound. Physics is at play, and the tiny speakers in skinny modern TVs just can't create quality audio. However, there are some settings and other tricks that might help.
TV settings for better sound
TV manufacturers know that bad sound is one of the biggest complaints people have about modern TVs. They've added audio processing features -- some good, some bad -- to many TVs. Again, there's only so much they can do, but they can help.
Sound mode: Some TVs have different sound modes that adjust to accentuate or attenuate different frequencies to sound better with different content. These should have names that are fairly obvious once you find the setting, like Clear Voice or Speech Mode.
Dialog enhancers: Some TVs have separate features that enhance the sound frequencies most common for voices. These have names like Speech Boost, Dialogue Enhancement, Speech Clarity and similar.
EQ: Some TVs have an equalizer, or EQ, feature. This will let you adjust the relative volume of high and low frequencies, treble and bass, respectively. Try reducing the bass a few notches first, then increasing the treble. If there's a separate midrange control, turning that up is another option to try. The difference should be noticeable, but you might need to play around with it a bit to get it to sound better than flat (aka no EQ at all).
Counterintuitively, with some TVs, you might experiment with turning both bass and treble down slightly. In some cases, this might result in boosting the midrange, where most voices are. Depending on how the EQ is designed, this might not work, however.
Automatic volume control: Some TVs have the ability to lower loud sounds and boost quiet ones. If you've ever been watching a movie, having turned up the volume to understand the dialogue, only to be blasted out of the room when the action starts (or the commercials come on), look for this setting. It might also be labeled "compression." This can result in the volume "pulsing" as it gets louder and softer during different scenes, but that might be a better option depending on how annoyed you were without this feature on.
Aryan Surendranath/CNET
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