Dialogue and Sound Effects interaction : Investigating strategies to maintain dialogue intelligibility in 5.1 mixes

Abstract: Film audiences have expressed continuous criticism about film sound, claiming that in many situations dialogue is difficult to hear. This issue raises questions about the factors that have negative impact on speech intelligibility and points to investigate strategies that maintain dialogue intelligible in a 5.1. This study investigates how listeners, audio engineering students, experience dialogue intelligibility, when different mixing techniques as dynamic equalization and ducking are applied to the sound effect. The results show that both signal processing techniques, dynamic equalization and ducking, are able to improve dialogue intelligibility and furthermore, dynamic equalization has been proved as the most effective.