IFA 2024: DTS Clear Dialogue seeks to combat this annoying issue with TV audio

Being able to discern dialogue when watching TV is an issue that plagues a huge number of people.

According to Netflix, around 40% of its subscribers have subtitles switched on when using the streaming service, while independent research points to more than 80% of people over 60 struggling to decipher what’s being said when on-screen action gets particularly intense.

TV manufacturers have sought to combat this by including audio options that boost dialogue, and dialogue-focused EQ presets are becoming increasingly common inclusions in both premium soundbars and more affordable soundbar solutions.

Now DTS – a subsidiary of Xperi best known for multi-channel audio technologies, such as the object-based format DTS:X – is tackling the issue by incorporating new AI-powered dialogue-enhancing tech at a chipset level.

DTS Clear Dialogue uses an inference engine to analyse audio streams in real time and allows users to adjust the level of dialogue, regardless of the source or content type. It’s a content-agnostic solution that’s also language-inclusive and seeks to take away some of the cognitive overload we experience when watching television, which in turn affects how well we hear dialogue.

Exactly how it’s incorporated into a television’s operating system will be down to the manufacturers that choose to support it and it’s not going to be available any time soon. I was told the earliest we’ll see it on commercially available TVs is next year.

I did, however, get to experience it running on a prototype TV at this year’s IFA conference in Berlin and it made a noticeable difference to my ability to pick up on the nuances of conversations and commentary.

With many of the booths at the conference still under construction, there was a great deal of background noise in my immediate surroundings but I could better make out what was being said during a hectic outdoors scene in 2015’s The Martian with the tech engaged. Dialogue was quite obviously more prominent in the mix but I still got a strong sense of the atmospheric effects of the Mars landscape.

The same proved true when watching coverage of the Tour de France; the technology helped enhance the clarity with which commentary was reproduced, as riders peddled their way through a raucous group of spectators.

DTS Clear Dialogue doesn’t just boost dialogue, but also intelligently reduces background noise on the fly. The AI component has been trained to tell the difference between key audio cues that impact your immersion in a scene and those that are less consequential.

During the demo I saw, a simple press of one of the volume buttons on the TV remote brought up sliders for both overall volume and the Clear Dialogue level. This level was then set to the user’s preference. The first two notches only boosted dialogue, so took nothing away from other parts of the soundscape, while further steps up the scale reduced an increasing amount of background noise.

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As noted above, the form the DTS Clear Dialogue user experience takes will differ from manufacturer to manufacturer. I was told it could be assigned to a dedicated button on the remote and even accessed via voice commands. It will work seamlessly with other DTS processing technologies but override any other voice clarity settings you might have active on your TV.

DTS says it will potentially look to expand into soundbars and AVRs too, but its priority is to help ensure a more intelligible viewing experience when relying on the speakers built into your television.

Given how widespread the issue of hearing dialogue through TV speakers is, DTS Clear Dialogue is certainly something to keep an eye (or ear) on. It may be some way from finding its way into our living rooms, but my experience suggests that it will achieve its stated aim very effectively.