Difficulties in following speech on TV due to loud background sounds are a common issue in broadcasting. Object-based audio (OBA) systems like MPEG-H Audio can solve this problem by providing a personalized speech level. Recently, international broadcasters have employed dialogue enhancement (DE) together with OBA, providing customization and improved accessibility to their audiences, e.g., during the football World Cup 2022. To also add customizable dialogues to material produced without OBA, deep neural networks (DNNs) can be applied to separate dialogues from the music and effects of the final audio mix. One of the technologies used for this is MPEG-H Dialog+, which has recently been adopted for the new “Clear Speech” service of the on-demand platform of the German public broadcaster ARD. This paper reviews the current state of DE, detailing real-world adoptions, with particular focus on the MPEG-H Audio system. The intention is to provide an up-to-date overview of successful implementations of DE solutions into production workflows as an example for further adoptions and developments.
Rieger et al. (Sun,) studied this question.