DeepSpace: Dynamic Spatial and Source Cue Based Source Separation for Dialog Enhancement

Abstract: Dialog Enhancement (DE) is a feature which allows a user to increase the level of dialog in TV or movie content relative to non-dialog sounds. When only the original mix is available, DE is "unguided," and requires source separation. In this paper, we describe the DeepSpace system, which performs source separation using both dynamic spatial cues and source cues to support unguided DE. Its technologies include spatio-level filtering (SLF) and deep-learning based dialog classification and denoising. Using subjective listening tests, we show that DeepSpace demonstrates significantly improved overall performance relative to state-of-the-art systems available for testing. We explore the feasibility of using existing automated metrics to evaluate unguided DE systems.