Re: Action item. definition and use of Clean audio in European television

On 25/05/2011, at 5:35 AM, David Singer <singer@apple.com> wrote:

> 
> On May 23, 2011, at 21:39 , Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Not quite when you look at those that talk about "clean audio" in the
>> way that we do. There, only "foreground dialogue and speech" is
>> explicitly mentioned, e.g. http://www.guidogybels.eu/cap3.html. Note
>> that the overall effect of the presentation may be to receive "clean
>> audio" in the way that you describe, but the track's content is not
>> clean audio, but only "foreground dialogue and speech".
>> 
>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 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".
>>> 
>>> 
>>> How do you feel about 'contrast enhanced' or 'high contrast' or 'low distraction'?
>>> 
>>> But...as you say...I'd like to use industry terms even if, to our ear, they are not ... very clean. :-)
>> 
>> I think you believe that other sounds than speech and dialogue are
>> also enhanced/extracted for "clean audio". That is explicitly not the
>> case IIUC.
> 
> 
> I think we can use an industry term, such as 'clean audio' or 'clean speech', and make it clear in the documentation that this is the 'primary program material, without extraneous or aesthetic background sounds'.
> 
> I imagine that in a program about whale-song, with schlocky new-age poetry being read in the background for 'effect', the 'clean' audio would be the whale-song without the poetry, for example.  

I doubt that actually. What users want is to manipulate the loudness of the speech separately from the rest because it's in human mature to care about speech most. The thing is: it also allows you to fade out the speech giving cleaner access to the rest of the sound scene. So, the effect is "clean audio".


> But given decent documentation, the author could work that out, even if the label says 'speech'.

If you prefer, we can call it "foreground sound" - that's more semantic and less confusing than "clean". I was going for "speech" since that is 99% of the content and people intuitively understand the idea of turning up the "speech" track (in contrast to turning up the "clean" track).

Silvia.
>

Received on Tuesday, 24 May 2011 22:32:26 UTC