Dialogue Enhancement in Object-based Audio -- Evaluating the Benefit on People above 65

Abstract: Due to age-related hearing loss, elderly people often struggle with following the language on TV. Because they form an increasing part of the audience, this problem will become even more important in the future and needs to be addressed by research and development. Object-based audio is a promising approach to solve this issue as it offers the possibility of customizable dialogue enhancement (DE). For this thesis an Adjustment / Satisfaction Test (A/ST) was conducted to evaluate the preferred loudness difference (LD) between speech and background in people above 65. Two different types of DE were tested: DE with separately available audio components (speech and background) and DE with components created by blind source separation (BSS). The preferred LDs compared to the original, differences of the preferred LDs between the two DE methods and the listener satisfaction were tested. It was observed that the preferred LDs were larger than the original LDs, that customizable DE increases listener satisfaction and that the two DE methods performed comparably well in terms of preferred LD and listener satisfaction. Based on the results, it can be assumed that elderly viewers above 65 will benefit equally from user-adjustable DE by available components and by dialogue separation.