Elderly people sometimes feel that the background sounds (music and sound effects) of broadcast programs are annoying. In response, we have developed a device that can adjust the mixing balance of program sounds suitable for elderly people, on the receiver side. The device suppresses uncorrelated components in the stereo background sound in speech segments (intervals in which narration and dialog are mixed with background sounds), and suppresses background sounds only without deterioration by gain control alone in non-speech segments. By subjective evaluations, we have verified that the proposed method can suppress the background sounds of programs by an equivalent of 6 dB, and viewing experiments with elderly people have shown that program sounds have become easier to understand.

Authors: Komori, Tomoyasu; Imai, Atsushi; Seiyama, Nobumasa; Takou, Reiko; Takagi, Tohru; Oikawa, Yasuhiro
Affiliations: NHK Engineering System, Inc., Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, Japan; Waseda University, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan; NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, Japan(See document for exact affiliation information.)
AES Convention: 135 (October 2013) Paper Number: 9010
Publication Date: October 16, 2013
Subject: Applications in Audio

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