Nugen Audio has launched a new speech intelligibility plug-in, DialogueCheck. A mono, stereo and multichannel dialogue clarity meter, the software provides an objective measure of speech audio intelligibility suited to use in film, TV, radio, podcasting and game audio production, as well as in postproduction environments.
‘Poor speech clarity is commonly cited as a major source of television audience complaints, making dialogue intelligibility increasingly important for audio professionals,’ says Nugen Audio CEO, Paul Tapper. ‘As engineers are likely to listen in an acoustically specialised environment compared to where the final mix might be played, it can be difficult for them to judge whether further changes are needed to improve clarity. Nugen Audio DialogueCheck provides an objective measure of speech in a portion of the audio file or through an entire project.’
The ability for a listener to understand dialogue is affected by many factors, including language, dialect, enunciation, reverb and effects, loudness and background noise, as well as listener hearing ability, listening environment, placement of loudspeakers and supporting visuals. DialogueCheck enables users to evaluate audio to identify sections of speech that might be difficult for listeners to understand.
DialogueCheck features more than 12 interface tools aimed at supporting engineers in the dialogue editing process, such as the integrated real-time bar meter and history graph. Additionally, the distribution view and numerical statistical values provide an overview of the speech intelligibility of the entire programme. This information can then be used to guide engineers to correct issues before testing again. Additionally, the tracking function syncs the views with the audio playback in the DAW, while Macro View highlights the current audio section within the wider historical view.
DialogueCheck employs the Listening Effort Meter (LE-Meter) developed by Fraunhofer IDMT, which allows sound engineers to visualise listening effort during mixing and conduct post-mixing checks to optimise audio quality. Designed to objectively assess the listening effort of dialogue in broadcast material, LE-Meter utses automatic speech recognition and psychoacoustic modelling with metrics to evaluate the intelligibility of dialogue.
‘Our LE-Meter enables the objective measurement and display of speech intelligibility and listening effort,’ says Prof Dr Jan Rennies-Hochmuth, Group Leader for Personal Hearing Systems at the Branch for Hearing, Speech and Audio Technologuey at Fraunhofer IDMT. ‘Thanks to validations and optimisations using formal listening tests, this provides media producers with a precise tool for analysing and implementing audio content. For example, difficult sections can be identified automatically for improvement with respect to listening enjoyment and accessibility.’
The new software also comes with a variety of factory settings and presets. Personal presets can be created and saved to later be selected in the featured Preset Bar.
While DialogueCheck is designed for use in traditional post-production, any audio that includes speech/dialogue can benefit from integrating the software. It also has benefits for pre-production to assess different miking configurations, performance styles and room set-ups to ensure that raw production audio is already near to the desirable clarity levels.
More: https://nugenaudio.com/dialoguecheckhttps://nugenaudio.com/dialoguecheck