I have televisions in the kitchen area and another 15 feet apart.The audio recepts difers about 2 secs. WHY?

Question

Both televisions are cable.

Answer 1

Hi,

I have noticed the same thing in my place. I have a tv in the basement and in the livin room. When I am watching the tv in the living room and someone else watches the same channel in the basement I always notice that the audio is behind in the basement tv. So I hear the same thing twice. The reason for this has to do with the laws of physics. Sound takes time to travel from the basement to the livingroom. So by the time it gets to the livingroom its takes some time period and that period is the delay of about 2 sec as you have mentioned. This is also true in your case because of the 15 feet distance. The important thing to understand here is that even though it takes time for you in the kitchen to hear the other tv, the person staying close to the non kitchen tv heard it before you did. And you heard the same audio at the same time as the other person from your kitchen tv. So another words, if you stay right between the two tvs, you would hear the audio from the 2 tv's at the same time since you are at equal distance from both tv's. The other think that I would like to mension is that you will never notice any diffrence in the video or picture movement in the 2 tv's because of the speed of light. Speed of light is far greater than the speed of sound per second. So your eyes wont notice the diffrence in the picture.

Hope this helped!

Answer 2

There are two possible reasons for the delay in audio.

1.

One TV is tuned to a digital channel and one is tuned the analog version of the same show. It takes time for a signals to be converted between digital & analog, so it's not surprising that one would be delayed.

2.

The second thing that could cause this is a processing delay in one of the TVs. In old analog tube type TVs there cannot be any significant delay between when the analog signal is received and when it is heard. Any time there is digital processing of a signal, there is going to be a delay. If the delay in the two TVs is different, the sound in one of the TVs will be delayed.

The one thing that it cannot possibly be is the 15 feet between the TVs. Cable TV signals travel about 170,000 miles per hour.