Integrating a Dialogue Enhancement Solution People Will Actually Use — and Love

Ask about someone’s favorite movie or TV show, and you’ll probably get three pieces of information: title, character and quote. From “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” to “Winter is coming,” compelling dialogue keeps viewers coming back.

Now imagine when Clark Gable uttered his famous line, he was drowned out by background noise or overwhelmed by the musical score. Moviegoers might have been confused and disappointed. They could’ve been thinking, “I don’t give a WHAT?” or “What did he say? I missed it.”

Clear dialogue makes this line iconic. However, the rise of high-tech, ultra-thin TV screens and changes in sound production processes have made it harder for viewers to hear what’s happening. Consider that 84% of viewers struggle to understand dialogue while watching TV, and over half of Americans say they’re using subtitles to bridge the gap.

Dialogue enhancement gives TV viewers more control over what they hear and how they hear it. The result? A better audio experience. As an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), here’s how you can improve the audio experience for TV viewers with DTS Clear Dialogue™.

The state of dialogue enhancement for TVs

With audio technologies improving, why is dialogue getting harder to hear?

Evolving preferences play a role. Consumers want televisions that are both large and thin. To make this possible, OEMs flatten speakers to fit slimmer physical profiles, but these smaller speakers can’t deliver the sound quality of their larger counterparts. Improving audio technology also plays a role in dialogue challenges. For example, the use of digital post-processing to add or amplify environmental sounds can make it harder to hear dialogue.

Subtitles offer a solution to dialogue enhancement. By putting dialogue on-screen, viewers won’t miss a word. But this creates a secondary issue: channel overload.

Human brains use the same framework to process audio and video stimuli. If you’re watching TV, you hear people talking. If you’re reading a book you “hear” the words in your head.

The problem? Our brains can only handle one input source at a time. Turning on subtitles creates two inputs — one on the screen and one in our head — and we can’t hear both simultaneously.

Challenges with current dialogue enhancement solutions

Issues with dialogue intelligibility have led to the emergence of several tech-driven solutions over the years. Dynamic range compression (DRC) is one of the most widely used techniques and is designed to balance out audio by lowering the volume of loud sounds and increasing the volume of softer ones. However, while this approach can make dialogue easier to understand, DRC can also create unwanted effects like “pumping” which can negatively impact the listening experience.

Newer TVs may also include dialogue enhancement features that boost common speech frequencies — between 125Hz and 5,000Hz. In this instance, the dialogue may be louder, but these features can increase background noise that falls within this range. And many of these solutions are a one-size fits-all, meaning viewers are given a limited number of presets, none of which may match their needs.

In several cases, the dialogue settings are also often hard to find. They may be buried in system menus or sub-menus, making it difficult for viewers to locate and adjust quickly if they want to turn dialogue enhancement on or off.

While these innovations have moved the industry forward, there’s still opportunity to create solutions that are more user friendly, customizable and designed specifically for how people experience dialogue at home.

Conquering confusion with DTS Clear Dialogue

Enter DTS Clear Dialogue, created to solve audio confusion. Let’s take a closer look.

What it does

DTS Clear Dialogue lets users adjust the volume of only spoken words — independently from everything else — to create a more consistent viewing experience. Viewers can use presets and on-screen sliders or control dialogue levels directly from their TV remote.

How it works

The solution relies on an optimized machine learning (ML) network trained with a diverse dataset.

Machine learning algorithms are the foundation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. They provide the content and context that AI needs to make decisions. To enhance dialogue, DTS created an ML algorithm capable of identifying dialogue from a given set of audio data. This model was then trained across multiple audio types and tested in real-world scenarios. With each audio track successfully (or unsuccessfully) processed, the model improves.

The result is a dialogue enhancement solution that can handle any audio track from any source, and its performance improves with continued use.

Why it matters

For end users, DTS Clear Dialogue offers complete control of their listening experience.

For manufacturers, the solution offers OEM-ready audio enhancements that are easy to integrate. DTS Clear Dialogue can be enabled on the same hardware used in modern television architecture, while offering substantive benefits over existing audio controls.

The biggest benefit? It’s a solution viewers will use — and love. This is a common conundrum for technology manufacturers: Despite best efforts, many applications ultimately frustrate rather than facilitate user aims. Consider word processors. While a digital mainstay, they’re often cumbersome and confusing. Streamlining key operations can lead to big market benefits. Recent data shows that Google Apps has outpaced Microsoft Office 365, in part because of its user-friendly approach.

DTS Clear Dialogue offers the same advantage for OEMs: a solution that does what users want without making it complicated, cumbersome or difficult to find.

The competitive advantage

DTS Clear Dialogue isn’t just a bonus feature or technical box to check — it’s a new approach to improving dialogue intelligibility that prioritizes viewers and puts them in control.

The result is a competitive advantage. Instead of leaving viewers to fend for themselves with subtitles or rely on third-party DSP solutions, OEMs can provide a better audio experience right out of the box. In the same way viewers now insist on the on-demand accessibility of streaming services and the high-fidelity visuals that come with modern TVs, they now want the ability to control every aspect of their audio experience, from the smallest whisper to the loudest argument to the most impactful speech.

Discover the best integrated TV audio solution for manufacturers. Get started with DTS Clear Dialogue.