Author: Roman

We recently came across an article https://lnkd.in/dx2ZUgZX discussing the use of Dolby Laboratories Dialog Intelligence for speech gating. This technology addresses a challenge we’ve encountered in the past, involving standards like ITU-R BS.1770 https://lnkd.in/dhVSRTRB and related methods. The article provides detailed technical information and references, allowing us to focus on the practical implications.

We had reference Dolby Dialog Intelligence source code as a departure point, and we applied the code to live audio streams we already handled. The primary outcome of this processing is the ability to confidently determine whether content contains speech or not. While the Dolby source code was relatively straightforward to integrate, it had some performance limitations. It worked, but the resource consumption didn’t align well with other processing requirements.

Before requesting production-ready implementation from Dolby, our customer allowed us to investigate further. We discovered that the initial part of the processing involved downsampling the audio signal to 16 kHz. By replacing this step with a proper #audio resampler and ensuring that it didn’t affect the speech detection algorithm’s output, we achieved a production-ready speech gating solution: processing complexity was reduced by an order of magnitude.

Speech gating plays a crucial role in determining the audio loudness of broadcasted content. Compliance requirements now demand accurate loudness measurements, preventing any manipulation or cheating with audio levels.