A few days ago, the little TV which my parents had in their kitchen gave up the ghost after 19 years service.

I lent them my spare Samsung LCD set. It has crappy little speakers but I don't use the set speakers at all, so doesn't bother me. But my old dad didn't like them at all.

Anyway, we had a look round the shops today for a new TV for them. I'd have thought the sound quality would have improved over the last few years, but it seems to be worse. Most of them were like listening to a 1960s Hong Kong made transistor radio.

Eventually got a 19" Toshiba, which doesn't sound too bad. But I wouldn't really like to listen to music on it.

It has HDMI, composite and pc inputs and is HD Ready. None of which my dad needs. Why couldn't they make a more basic set with really good speakers as well?

If you have been - then thanks for reading. Just had to have a little whine.

It's simply due to lack of space in the LCD cabinets, something has to go!

Yes, lack of space, and keeping the price down - Samsungs are particularly bad, as the speakers face downwards, and have two thirds of the cone blanked off to funnel the sound through a small slot.

Surely the issue of space is down to the design? I tried some sets which had biggish grills on the sides, but still only had tiny speakers in them.

As for cost, I have a £40 Crown DAB portable which sounds excellent. The cost of the speakers to Crown was probably less than a pound!

I'm sure that 19 inch TVs in the £300 price bracket could do better if they tried.

This has been a problem for a while - it isn't unique to LCDs - quite a few CRTs had fairly lousy sound quality - and before Mr Goodwin offers his opinion, it wasn't always the cheap sets which were the worst offenders.

I remember some of the early Sony Nicam 21 / 25 / 29 " U series sets which had abysmal sound quality for a vastly inflated price. To get decent sound out of a Sony you had to trade upward into the 'K' series if I recall correctly.

Panasonic tended to be better than most in terms of sound quality from their sets for the price.

Aesthetics clearly play a part, with a lot of CRTs there was always the temptation to place the speakers in the side facing sideways or in the back / top of the set to keep a clean 'front' - result was usually poor sound.

I think with the LCDs I've seen it's that they are trying (perhaps too hard) to make very slender sets, which means you have less space to put decent speakers in.

Not too impressed with the audio on my Samsung, I imagine they expect someone who gets a 46in screen to have a surround sound system.

It aint just small sets- all the flat panels arnt that great!

not so , i have a toshiba 32c3030 and find the sound to be very good for an lcd tv

No, I agree, some of the Sony CRT sets had absolutely crap speakers fitted - but 'mostly' only the lower price mono sets.


A 'U' series is an LCD? - there have never really been any series letters on CRT sets, and there's no 'K' series either. But all CRT's start with the letter 'K' and all end with the letter 'U' (for UK).

The LCD sets tend to use fairly small cone speakers to keep their slender looks. Another alternative would be for the manufacturer to use flat panel NXT speakers instead of the traditional cone design but, of course, this would increase costs which is a bit of a no-no in the small screen market.

DISCLAIMER: I don't think NXT speakers are the be all and end all of speaker design - far from it. I just think they'd be more suited in small flat panel displays than the tiny weeny cones currently employed.

I would agree with this. I have a Mission NXT 6.1 speaker set for my home theatre set up, and I have to say I am a little disappointed with the sound, not on films (wonderful deep and rich sound) but on music, the top end sounds a little off to me. It's not as if they were cheap either, not by a long shot, so if they put these in LCD tellys, I am sure it would be bargain basement speakers.