New Plug-In Offers Speech Intelligibility

Leeds, U.K.―Nugen Audio is working to help improve speech intelligibility in film, television, radio, podcasting and game audio production and post-production with the release of a new plug-in, DialogCheck.

A mono, stereo and multichannel dialog clarity meter, DialogCheck provides an objective measure of speech audio intelligibility. The software features more than a dozen interface tools aimed at supporting engineers in their dialog 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 program. This information can then be used to guide engineers to correct issues before testing again. Furthermore, 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 utilizes the Listening Effort Meter, developed by Fraunhofer IDMT, which allows sound engineers to visualize listening effort during mixing and conduct post-mixing checks to optimize audio quality. Designed to objectively assess the listening effort of dialog in broadcast material, LE-Meter utilizes automatic speech recognition and psychoacoustic modeling with metrics to evaluate the intelligibility of dialog.

Like all Nugen Audio solutions, 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 DialogCheck is designed for use in traditional post-production, any audio that includes speech/dialog can benefit from integrating the software. DialogCheck is said to also offer benefits for pre-production to assess different miking configurations, performance styles, room set-ups, etc., to ensure that raw production audio is already near to the desirable clarity levels.

“Poor speech clarity is commonly cited as a major source of television audience complaints, making dialog intelligibility increasingly important for audio professionals,” says Dr. Paul Tapper, CEO, Nugen Audio. “As engineers are likely to listen in an acoustically specialized 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 DialogCheck provides an objective measure of speech in a portion of the audio file or through an entire project.”