The rewind button on my TV remote is worn to the point of exhaustion. It feels like every time I want to watch a movie at home, the soundtrack is so loud it could wake up the neighbors a block away, but the dialogue is like a whisper.
I pause, rewind 10 seconds, double the volume and scrunch my face in concentration as I try to work out what the characters actually said to move the plot along. It's a frustrating and time wasting dance, but I always wonder how much more difficult it must be for people with hearing loss.
Though, I think I might have found the one AI feature that is actually useful in real life. Sonos (yes, that Sonos, the company that decided to annoy every single one of its customers with a badly thought out app update last year), just announced a new AI-powered Speech Enhancement feature.
According to a Sonos Newsroom post, the company has managed to use machine learning to separate dialogue from other audio in real time. This means no more temporary volume adjustments as you try to navigate blasting soundtrack and mumbling dialogue.
It'll roll out as a free update to the Sonos Arc Ultra soundbar from May 13, 2025. Whether it comes to other Sonos devices in the future remains to be seen, but let's hope this software update is less dramatically catastrophic than the app debacle from last year.
The feature, developed in collaboration with the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID), will be available as a tiered setting in the Sonos app, allowing you to toggle between low, medium, high, and max enhancement levels.
Low through high are designed for people like me who just can't pick out the dialogue in otherwise noisy films, but the max setting specifically caters to people with hearing loss. In this mode, the software enhances the speech but also adjusts 'non-speech' elements to elevate the dialogue.
I've owned Sonos speakers for about a decade, but I lost a lot of trust in the company after the terrible mess they made of the app last year. Even all this time later, I still have to wait up to 30 seconds just to change a track.
But it's rare that tech companies actually prioritize accessibility. Making sure that everyone can access and enjoy the things they like should be a core part of any product. And if Sonos spends time on this, and can encourage other brands making some of the best soundbars, then maybe I'll be able to forgive its past mistakes.
