DialogCheck (Nugen), key tool to achieve dialogue intelligibility

Larry Benjamin, a re-recording engineer nominated eleven times for the Emmy for series such as 'Better Call Saul' or 'Ozark', has introduced the new DialogCheck solution, a plug-in from Nugen Audio to improve the quality of speech in fiction formats.

To Benjamin, ensuring dialogue clarity is not just an artistic choice, but rather a responsibility. "I love the challenge of helping a client solve a problem. If they want to tell a story in a unique way, how can sound help do that? That's the question I constantly ask myself. As a mixer, I think one of my strengths is my experience in perfecting speech intelligibility, which is incredibly crucial to my job. If I do my job right, viewers shouldn't need subtitles or a remote control. In fact, Netflix sent me to Southeast Asia to talk about this topic," he says.

One of its biggest obstacles is the configuration of the home entertainment. As viewers consume content on all types of devices, from cinema-quality home theaters to small laptop speakers, Benjamin says the margin of error It is very small. To overcome these challenges, Benjamin has recently included DialogCheck of Nugen Audio in your workflow, implementing the new solution in your work in the second season of Poker Face and in the series of Netflix recently released, Black Rabbit, as well as in a new Vince Gilligan project that will come to Apple TV+: "It's another tool in the arsenal for creating a standard. It's a real-time snapshot of where you are in the process. It has no biases or hearing loss, it just judges where the spoken word falls in the mix. It's an agnostic tool that only tells you whether the dialogue is intelligible compared to everything else."

Although it is the latest addition to his workflow, Benjamin sees DialogCheck like a “safety net” especially now that the speech intelligibility It is examined more than ever. The engineer tested the plugin both in real time on the master tracks as offline with AudioSuite: "The measurements were very similar. It gave me confidence that I was in the desired range for dialogue intelligibility, even in scenes with whispers or loud music. "In these projects, DialogCheck gave scores to the spoken content that confirmed that their mixes were hitting the mark. (...) It provides a qualitative judgment on where the dialogue should be placed, which is exactly what I need."

Benjamin is no stranger to other Nugen Audio plug-ins: “Whenever I have music that is just a stereo mix and I need to convert it to 5.1 and 7.1.2, Halo Upmix produces an excellent result. I also love it VisLM. It is a very accurate meter that is constantly updated as I mix. Ballistics is desirable and gives us exactly what we need to comply with LKFS.” Beyond the individual plug-ins, Benjamin praises Nugen Audio for the consistency in interface design of its entire line of solutions. "All the plug-ins have a unified look, which makes them easy to use. DialogCheck looked familiar when compared to VisLM; although they do different things, the similar interface made it very easy to get started."