Nugen Audio has released the DialogCheck speech intelligibility plug-in, a mono, stereo and multichannel dialogue clarity meter that provides an objective measure of speech audio intelligibility in a portion of the audio clip or through a project.
Suited to use in television, radio, film, podcasting and game audio production, as well as postproduction environments, DialogCheck addresses an element of editing that has become increasingly important for audio professionals. ‘Though poor speech clarity is commonly cited as a major source of television audience complaints, engineers typically listen in acoustically specialised environments that can make it more difficult to judge whether further changes are needed to improve clarity,’ says Nugen Audio CEO, Paul Tapper. ‘
The ability for a listener to understand a piece of dialogue is affected by factors including language, dialect, enunciation, reverb and effects, relative leves of speech and background noise, as well as listener hearing ability, listening environment, placement of speakers and supporting visuals, among other elements.
Audio engineers have control over some of these factors, but not all. DialogCheck enables users to evaluate audio to identify sections of speech that might be difficult for listeners to understand, allowing engineers to make informed decisions about appropriate tweaks.
DialogCheck features numerous interface tools, 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 an entire programme. This information can then be used to guide engineers to correct issues before testing again. Further, 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.
DialogCheck also has its 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.
The Listening Effort Meter (LE-Meter) developed by Fraunhofer IDMT, allows sound engineers to visualise listening effort during mixing and conduct post-mixing checks to optimise audio quality. Designed to assess the listening effort of dialogue in broadcast material, LE-Meter uses automatic speech recognition and psychoacoustic modeling 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 Technology at Fraunhofer IDMT. ‘Thanks to validations and optimisations using formal listening tests, this provides media producers with a precise tool for analyzing 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 Preset Bar.
While DialogCheck is designed for use in traditional postproduction, any audio that includes speech/dialogue can benefit from integrating the software.