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VoiceFirst™ enhances speech in movies, TV shows, and sports events while reducing background noise and music. |
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Alango VoiceFirst™ technology (previously known as SEN or Sound Effect Normalization) has been developed to improve speech intelligibility in movies through de-emphasis of background sounds and music. In the majority of cases, it is also applicable for television shows and sports events broadcast on TV. Besides increasing dialogue intelligibility, VoiceFirst can also reduce the user’s fatigue from exaggerated sound effects thus making the video content more enjoyable. The difficulty to properly understand human speech in television shows and movies stems from the necessity to extract the speech signal from competing background sounds. People report that movies, television shows, sports events and other television programs are “getting noisier and noisier as time goes by”. Older adults and people with sensorineural hearing loss experience more difficulty understanding speech in noise than young adults due to disadvantages in peripheral and central auditory function as well as cognition. However, some studies have shown that even people with normal hearing required more effort to understand speech in noise than in quiet condition. Extraneous background sounds such as explosions, loud music in a bar, sound of an approaching train and so on are mixing with the dialogue and competing for our attention. User’s control of the audio content is generally limited by volume and frequency equalization control. With these limited tools it is impossible to filter out (or even reduce) the background sounds and the music without also having a negative effect on the speech dialog, since all occur within the same spectrum. Alango VoiceFirst detects and significantly attenuates the backgrounds sounds, while clear speech in quiet conditions is fully preserved and can be even emphasized. VoiceFirst technology, when activated, allows a self-tuneable and enjoyable listening experience with the proper mix of music, sound effects, and spoken dialogue. To operate, VoiceFirst requires a stereo input. VoiceFirst leverages the fact that within a stereo mix, the main voice or dialogue is positioned in the center, while sound effects are panned to the sides (or move spatially across the mix).
 Voice Comes First: Enhance the dialogue in movies
and TV shows with Alango VoiceFirst™ Technology |