Leading Audio Manufacturers Join Forces on Dialog Intelli...

Leading professional audio manufacturers NUGEN Audio, RTW, Steinberg and Telos Alliance have joined forces with Fraunhofer IDMT to establish a common approach to measuring and presenting dialog intelligibility across broadcast, production and post-production environments.

The companies have formed the LEAP Meter Manufacturers Group (LMMG) and, together with Fraunhofer IDMT, developed the LMMG Dialog Intelligibility Implementation Agreement.

Presented at IBC 2026, the agreement defines a common implementation framework for products based on LEAP, Fraunhofer IDMT's AI-based technology for objectively assessing the perceived intelligibility of spoken content.

The initiative addresses an increasingly important challenge across television, radio, streaming, podcasts and other speech-based media: audiences struggling to understand dialog.

Traditional audio measurements, such as level and loudness, provide essential information about an audio signal, but they do not directly indicate how easily listeners can understand speech. LEAP takes a different approach by estimating the listening effort required to understand dialog, providing audio professionals with an objective indication of perceived dialog intelligibility.

One Technology, Consistent Results

As LEAP is integrated into products from different manufacturers, the participating companies identified the need to ensure that users receive comparable results regardless of which product or platform they are using.

Although products may use the same underlying algorithm, differences in signal processing, downmixing, scaling, smoothing, terminology and visualization can otherwise lead to differences in how measurements are presented and interpreted.

The LMMG Dialog Intelligibility Implementation Agreement establishes a shared set of recommendations designed to provide consistency across implementations.

Under the agreement, participating manufacturers have standardized key aspects of their implementations, including the use of Dialog Intelligibility as the common terminology and DIU (Dialog Intelligibility Unit) as the unit for customer-facing measurements.

LEAP results are mapped to a common scale from 0 to 100 DIU, with higher values representing better dialog intelligibility and lower listening effort. The agreement also defines common reference thresholds and color ranges, signal processing and downmixing requirements, smoothing and the handling of non-dialog content.

The result is a common foundation that allows dialog intelligibility measurements made using products from different manufacturers to be directly compared and consistently interpreted.

Consistency Across the Production Chain

LEAP-based products are being developed for a wide range of applications, including live production, broadcast monitoring, post-production, quality control and content verification.

The common implementation framework means that dialog intelligibility can be assessed at different stages of the production and distribution chain using tools from different manufacturers while maintaining a consistent interpretation of the measurement.

A production could, for example, be monitored using one manufacturer's solution, refined during post-production using another and subsequently checked during quality control using a third all using the same underlying technology, scale and measurement principles.

Establishing this interoperability is a central objective of the LMMG initiative.

The growing importance of dialog intelligibility is also reflected in the IBC 2026 Accelerator Media Innovation Programme. The Crystal Clear: Boosting Speech Intelligibility in Media project brings together broadcasters, industry organizations and research institutions to explore consistent and practical approaches to measuring and improving speech intelligibility across broadcast and streaming.

While separate from the LMMG initiative, the project underlines the growing industry recognition of dialog intelligibility as an important consideration throughout the media production chain.

See Dialog Intelligibility in Action at IBC 2026

Visitors to IBC 2026 can learn more about dialog intelligibility measurement based on the LMMG Implementation Agreement from the participating manufacturers and discover how the underlying Fraunhofer IDMT LEAP technology is being brought into professional audio products and workflows.

Meet the participating manufacturers throughout the show at:

NUGEN Audio: Stand P27

RTW: Hall 8, Stand 8.D44 (Amptec)

Steinberg: Hall 8, Stand 8.D25 (Yamaha)

Telos Alliance: Hall 8, Stand 8.D37

At the manufacturers' stands, visitors can learn how the common implementation framework is being applied across different products and workflows, and discover the companies' plans for integrating dialog intelligibility measurement into their solutions. Where implementations are already available, visitors may also have the opportunity to see the technology in action.

Fraunhofer IDMT, as the developer of the underlying LEAP technology, has been closely involved in the cooperation and the development of the common implementation framework.

A Common Industry Approach

The first version of the LMMG Dialog Intelligibility Implementation Agreement establishes the foundation for consistent real-time dialog intelligibility measurement.

The group intends to continue its collaboration as industry experience with the technology grows. Future work will include research into integrated dialog intelligibility metrics that could characterize the intelligibility of complete programs or assets.

Such measurements could ultimately provide broadcasters, streaming services and content producers with new tools for quality control and help establish dialog intelligibility as an important complement to established audio measurements, such as loudness.

By collaborat

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