Avantree Ensemble Review: What Months of Nightly TV Use Taught Me

Somewhere around the third time Joanne asked me to turn the TV down, I started keeping a mental count of how often we had the same conversation. She would be settled on the couch with her book, and I would have the volume where I could actually hear the dialogue, and after a while she would say, 'Walt, it's a little loud.' I would turn it down, and then I would be the one leaning forward, missing half of what the newscaster said. We ran that loop every night for a couple of years. I tried closed captioning, and it helped, but it also meant I was reading the news instead of watching it. I tried sitting closer to the screen. I tried a little amplifier box, and it just made everything louder, the way a radio sounds when you turn it up too far. What I needed was something that made voices clearer without making the whole room louder. That is what finally pushed me to order the Avantree Ensemble, and I have been using it just about every night for the better part of a year.

I am not an audiologist, and I am not going to pretend to be one. I am a 69-year-old retired electrical lineman with mild to moderate hearing loss in both ears, worse in the left, from decades of working around line equipment and chainsaws. What I can tell you is how this thing behaved in my living room, night after night, and whether it did the job I bought it for. If you are having trouble hearing, the first thing I would tell you is to get your hearing checked by a professional. The second thing is that a good set of TV headphones can take a lot of the daily frustration out of the evenings, and the Ensemble is the one I have stuck with. I have been doing this long enough to know that a product either earns its place or it does not, and I do not keep things around out of politeness.

How I've Used It

The Ensemble comes with a base unit that plugs into your TV and a pair of wireless headphones that charge by sitting on the base. I connected ours with the optical cable, and the whole setup took about ten minutes, most of it spent figuring out which port on the back of the TV was which. Our TV is a 55-inch set in the living room, and my recliner sits about twelve feet from the screen, which is well within the range of the wireless signal.

Here is how it fits into a normal evening. I put the headphones on when the news comes on at six. The volume controls are on the right earcup, and I set them where the dialogue sounds natural to me. Joanne watches the same program at whatever volume she wants, which these days is about half of what I used to need. When the ballgame comes on, same routine. When I am done, I set the headphones back on the base, and they charge up for the next night.

I have done this just about every night for months, through the evening news, a lot of westerns, and a full baseball season. That is the measure that matters to me: not how a product works on a bench for an afternoon, but how it behaves on the 800th night. This one has behaved. The routine is so settled now that I do not think about it, which is exactly what I wanted. Good gear disappears into your day. This has.

What the Ensemble Actually Does

The base unit is the part that does the real work. It takes the audio from your TV and sends it wirelessly to the headphones, so the sound comes to you instead of filling the room. Because the headphones have their own volume control, you are not reaching for the TV remote every time you want it a little louder or a little softer. That sounds like a small thing, but it is the whole point of the product.

There are a couple of ways to connect it, and that is worth knowing before you buy. Optical is the cleanest option if your TV has the port, and most modern TVs do. There is also a standard aux input for older sets. I used the optical connection, and the audio has been clear, with no lag between the picture and the sound that I can notice. I am picky about that, because nothing ruins a western like hearing the gunshot a half second after the smoke.

The headphones charge by sitting on the base, so there is no separate charger to keep track of and no battery door to fight with. A full charge has lasted me several evenings of news and a ballgame, and I have never once had them die in the middle of a show. The base also has a switch that lets you choose which input you are listening to, and you can add a second pair of headphones if you ever need two people listening at once.

What Months of Nightly Use Taught Me

The honest headline is that it has held up. I have dropped the headphones, left them in the recliner and sat on them once, and generally treated them the way I treat my tools, and they still work. The padding is still comfortable after a full ballgame, which surprised me, because I am not a man who likes things on his head. I wore hard hats for 34 years, so I know the difference between gear that disappears and gear that annoys you.

The thing that mattered most to me was whether the dialogue stayed clear. With my kind of hearing loss, soft voices are the first thing to go, and my left ear is worse than my right. The Ensemble lets me set the volume where voices sound natural, and the actors come through the headphones the way they are supposed to, without me turning to Joanne and asking what somebody just said. That has not happened in months, and I notice its absence every single night.

I will also say this: the sound is honest, not fancy. It is built for clear voices and comfortable listening, not for feeling like you are in a movie theater. If you want explosions to shake the house, you want a soundbar and a subwoofer, not these headphones. If you want to hear the dialogue on a 60-year-old western, this is exactly the tool.

For the first time in years, Joanne and I watched the same program at the same time, her reading with the volume where she wanted it and me hearing every word. Nobody had to ask anybody to turn anything down.

Where It Falls Short

No product gets a free pass, and this one has its quirks. The headphones are not what I would call small, and after a couple of hours I know they are there. They are fine for a news broadcast or a ballgame, but if you are someone who wants to forget you are wearing anything at all, you will notice them on your head. My ears run warm after a long stretch, too, which is worth knowing if you are sensitive to that.

The base unit also has to sit somewhere near the TV, which means another little box on the shelf and another cord to tuck away. It is not a big deal, and it is not invisible either. Joanne made sure I tucked the cord in neatly, and I will admit she was right to. If your TV cabinet is already crowded, you will want to find a spot for it before you open the box.

There is also the question of what these headphones cannot do. They are for the TV, full stop. They are not noise-canceling headphones for the airplane, and they are not earbuds for a walk around the block. If you are hoping one product will cover every listening situation, this is not that product. I bought mine for one job, and it does that job.

Alternatives I Considered

Before I settled on the Ensemble, I looked at a few other options, because I do not buy the first thing I find. The Sennheiser RS 120 is the name people bring up most often when you talk about TV headphones, and it is a solid system with a good reputation. It just was not the right fit for me, so I sent it back and kept looking.

I also tried a no-name pair of wireless headphones early on, the kind you find in the checkout aisle of an electronics store. They worked for about a month, and then the battery stopped holding a charge. That experience is part of why the charging base on the Ensemble mattered to me. When the headphones sit on the base when they are not in use, there is no battery to forget to charge and no charger to lose.

And I seriously considered a soundbar, which a lot of people swear by. But a soundbar still fills the room with sound, and the whole point for us was that Joanne could sit three feet away and read without hearing my TV. Headphones were the only option that actually solved the problem instead of just moving it. That is the lens I would tell you to shop through: what exactly are you trying to fix?

The Bottom Line

If you are shopping for a TV headphone system, the questions that matter are simple. Will it connect to my TV without a fight? Will my ears be comfortable for a full show? Will the charge last? Will it still work in six months? The Ensemble answered all four for me, and I am a hard person to impress when it comes to things that plug into the back of a TV.

I would also tell you to buy from somewhere with a return policy you trust, because hearing is personal, and what works for me might not work for you. That is not a knock on the product. It is just the truth about buying anything for your ears. If the Ensemble is not the right fit, the return policy is what lets you find out the easy way.

One more thing I have learned the hard way: read the recent reviews, not just the overall rating. A product can have a great average and still have a bad batch, or a great rating and a manual that reads like it was translated twice. The Ensemble has over fifteen thousand ratings at the time I am writing this, and the mix of long-term owners and first-time buyers is what convinced me to give it a chance in the first place.

Who This Is For

This is for the person who can hear the TV fine and the person who cannot, living in the same room. It is for the spouse who is tired of being the volume police and the spouse who is tired of asking what the actor just said. If you have mild to moderate hearing loss like mine, and you just want the evening news to sound the way it used to, this is the product I would put at the top of the list. It is also for anyone who likes to watch TV in bed while their partner sleeps, because the sound stays in your ears and nowhere else. If you have ever sat through a movie with one hand on the remote, bumping the volume up for the dialogue and down for the music, you know exactly what I am talking about.

Who Should Skip It

If you have severe hearing loss, or if you are not sure what is going on with your hearing, do not buy headphones first. Go see a professional and get a proper hearing test. That is the honest advice, and it is the advice I would give my own brother. Also, if you want theater-style sound, or you cannot stand anything on your head, this is not the product for you. And if your TV is in a room where you need to hear the doorbell, the phone, or somebody calling from the kitchen, think hard about whether isolating your hearing is a good idea. There are evenings I keep one earcup off for exactly that reason. And if you mostly watch TV alone in a room where nobody else can hear it, you may not need headphones at all. The Ensemble earns its keep in shared spaces.