- From: Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com>
- Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 10:57:48 +1000
- To: David Singer <singer@apple.com>
- Cc: Sean Hayes <Sean.Hayes@microsoft.com>, "HTML Accessibility Task Force (public-html-a11y@w3.org)" <public-html-a11y@w3.org>
On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 12:43 AM, David Singer <singer@apple.com> wrote: > > On May 21, 2011, at 2:39 , Silvia Pfeiffer wrote: > >>> I don't think we should (a) stray from normal industry parlance or (b) assume that it's always the speech that is the main program content. >> >> I agree. Since we are talking about a technology that diverges from >> what the industry labels as "clean audio", we should therefore not use >> the same term. >> > > Can you say how you think we are differing from the concept of 'clean audio'? I agree that the way clean audio is achieved in various systems varies (quite widely) -- e.g. by isolating to a channel or two in some multi-channel environments, but I think we can achieve clean audio in HTML (and we should, and should at least conceive of the labeling for all sorts of conditions, such as high-contrast video). Calling a video track that has high-contrast video "clean" is not really appropriate either. I'd much prefer such a track to actually be called "high-contrast" so its content makes sense. A "clean" video channel could be all sorts of other things, too, such as "cleaned from blocking artifacts" or "cleaned up brightness", or "cleaned up white balance" etc. It doesn't really mean anything to call a video track "clean" - it it particular doesn't tell us what to use it for. But back to audio. I am mostly objecting to the term "clean audio" from the point of view that most people understand something else as "clean audio" - just search for the term and you will find that it refers to the quality of an audio recording more than to the ETSI/BBC way of using it: it means avoidance of clipping, interference, noise reduction, audio restoration etc. To an audio person, a "clean audio" channel indicates that this is a replacement recording to the main audio channel with a higher-quality recording. However, where ETSI/BBC and us use "clean audio", we refer to the possibility of separately increasing the volume of the foreground sound. And it ETSI's spec in particular it is reduced to adding a speech-only channel. This is why I am suggesting the term "speech" to be more appropriate. ETSI actually call a channel that contains speech-only for "clean audio" purposes a "hearing impaired" channel. At least this describes what the channel is being used for. "speech" would describe what it contains. "clean audio" give a false indication of better sound quality. I would be ok with "foreground sound", too, but I would be very unhappy about the term "clean audio". Cheers, Silvia.
Received on Tuesday, 24 May 2011 00:58:35 UTC