In audio production, background ducking facilitates speech intelligibility while allowing the background to fulfill its purpose, e.g., to create ambiance, set the mood, or convey semantic cues. Technical details for recommended ducking practices are not currently documented in the literature. This report first analyzes the common practices found in TV documentaries, and it then describes a listening test that investigated the preferences of 22 normal-hearing participants on the Loudness Difference (LD) between commentary and background during ducking. Highly personal preferences were observed, highlighting the importance of object-based personalization. Statistically significant difference was found between nonexpert and expert listeners. On average, nonexperts preferred LDs that were 4 LU higher than the ones preferred by experts. A statistically significant difference was also found between Commentary over Music (CoM) and Commentary over Ambiance (CoA). Based on the test results, the authors recommend at least 10 LU difference for CoM and at least 15 LU for CoA. Moreover, a computational method based on the Binaural Distortion-Weighted Glimpse Proportion (BiDWGP) was found to match the median preferred LD for each item with good accuracy.

Authors: Torcoli, Matteo; Freke-Morin, Alex; Paulus, Jouni; Simon, Christian; Shirley, Ben
Affiliations: Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, Erlangen, Germany; Acoustics Research Centre, University of Salford, UK; International Audio Laboratories Erlangen, Germany, A joint institution of Universität Erlangen-Nürnburg and Fraunhofer IIS(See document for exact affiliation information.)
JAES Volume 67 Issue 12 pp. 1003-1011; December 2019
Publication Date: December 30, 2019

Download Now (491 KB)

This paper is Open Access which means you can download it for free.

No AES members have commented on this paper yet.

Subscribe to this discussion

To be notified of new comments on this paper you can subscribe to this RSS feed. Forum users should login to see additional options.

Start a discussion!

If you would like to start a discussion about this paper and are an AES member then you can login here:
Username:
Password:

If you are not yet an AES member and have something important to say about this paper then we urge you to join the AES today and make your voice heard. You can join online today by clicking here.