Snap, crackle and pop : how sound effects help, and hinder, hearing in broadcast audio

Ward, L; Shirley, BG; Davies, WJ

Abstract

Complaints about the intelligibility of television speech have become increasingly common,
both for normal hearing and hard of hearing listeners alike. The debate these complaints have
sparked have stretched from angry viewers on Twitter right up to the House of Lords. Despite
this, the question of how to improve the clarity and accessibility of television speech remains
unanswered.
A recent BBC whitepaper highlighted that the barrier to providing more accessible broadcast
audio is not technology. The barrier they highlighted is the lack of understanding of what
accessible broadcast audio needs to contain to be more accessible and meaningful for hard of
hearing listeners. This work begins to address this deficit.
This presentation will outline the current investigation into how different broadcast sound
elements, specifically sound effects, interact with speech intelligibility for normal and hard of
hearing listeners. Current results from this work show that the inclusion of relevant sound
effects can significantly improve intelligibility of speech in complicated listening environments
for normal hearing listeners (increasing word recognition from 35.8% to 60.7%). For hard of
hearing listeners this effect is not so clear-cut, with relevant sound effects only improving for
intelligibility for half of listeners. How this knowledge, along with advances in object-based
broadcasting, can be leveraged to deliver more accessible and personalisable broadcast
content will also be outlined.

Citation

Ward, L., Shirley, B., & Davies, W. (2017, June). Snap, crackle and pop : how sound effects help, and hinder, hearing in broadcast audio. Presented at SPARC 2017 Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference, University of Salford, UK

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: SPARC 2017 Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference
• Conference Location: University of Salford, UK
• Start Date: Jun 27, 2017
• End Date: Jun 29, 2017
• Publication Date: Jul 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jan 13, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 13, 2022
• Book Title: SPARC 2017 retrospect & prospects : Salford postgraduate annual research conference book of abstracts
• ISBN: 9781907842986
• Additional Information: Event Type : Conference