Fraunhofer IDMT has joined forces with Nugen Audio, RTW, Steinberg and Telos Alliance to establish a common framework for measuring and visualising dialogue intelligibility in media workflows.
The agreement centres on Fraunhofer IDMT’s AI-based LEAP technology, Listening Effort Prediction for Acoustic Parameters, which is designed to assess how much effort is required to understand speech in media content.
While level and loudness measurements remain central to audio production and broadcast, they do not directly show whether spoken content is easy for audiences to understand. LEAP is intended to give audio professionals an objective indication of perceived intelligibility across production, post-production, broadcast, streaming, podcasts and other speech-led formats.
As LEAP is integrated into more professional audio products, manufacturers identified the need to ensure comparable results across different platforms and tools. Differences in signal processing, downmixing, scaling, smoothing, terminology and visualisation could otherwise affect how results are presented and interpreted.
Fraunhofer IDMT and the manufacturers have formed the LEAP Meter Manufacturers Group to develop the LMMG Dialog Intelligibility Implementation Agreement.
The agreement standardises the use of “Dialog Intelligibility” as the customer-facing term and “DIU”, or Dialog Intelligibility Unit, as the measurement unit. LEAP results are mapped to a common 0 to 100 DIU scale, with higher values indicating better intelligibility and lower listening effort.
It also sets shared reference thresholds and colour ranges, as well as requirements covering signal processing, downmixing, smoothing and the handling of non-dialog content.
Prof Dr Jan Rennies-Hochmuth, head of personalised hearing systems at Fraunhofer IDMT, described the framework as “an important next step” in maintaining dialog intelligibility across the audio workflow.
The aim is to allow a production to be monitored, refined in post-production and checked during quality control using tools from different manufacturers while retaining the same underlying technology, scale and measurement principles.
The first version of the implementation agreement establishes a basis for consistent real-time measurement. As practical experience grows, the group plans to explore ways to assess dialog intelligibility across a full programme or media asset, creating additional quality assurance tools for broadcasters, streaming services and content producers.
Fraunhofer IDMT is showing approaches to speech intelligibility at IBC 2026 in Amsterdam from September 11 to 14. The institute is involved in the IBC Accelerator Media Innovation Programme project, Crystal Clear: Boosting Speech Intelligibility in Media, which explores practical approaches to measuring and improving dialog intelligibility across broadcast and streaming.
Visitors will also be able to see dialog intelligibility measurement in professional audio tools at the booths of LEAP Meter Manufacturers Group members.