Whether it’s audio compression, poor recording quality, or directors who take an ambivalent attitude toward portions of their scripts, TV dialogue comprehension faces a lot of challenges these days. DTS, the company best known for its DTS:X theatrical and home digital surround sound, thinks it has the answer: an AI-based technology that it calls DTS Clear Dialogue. The company announced the new feature, which it plans to license to smart TV makers, at IFA Berlin.
Instead of specialized soundbar designs or dedicated wireless earbuds, DTS Clear Dialogue uses a machine learning algorithm that has been trained on thousands of hours of TV content — everything from live sports to Hollywood blockbusters. It uses this model to understand which parts of a soundtrack are made of voices and which parts are ambient sounds or effects like gunshots or squealing tires.
When it’s enabled, TVs that offer DTS Clear Dialogue will typically give folks the option to control the volume of speech separately from the volume of those other soundtrack elements. In some cases, the controls might look like individual on-screen sliders with settings that are numbered, e.g. 1-10, while other manufacturers may choose to offer a simplified low-medium-high control.
DTS hasn’t indicated which manufacturers will be first to include Clear Dialogue, but it did indicate that we should see them in stores in 2025.
Clear Dialogue is designed to be embedded in a smart TV’s processor, and it gets calibrated to work with each TV model’s specific configuration and type of speaker(s). As such, it’s a TV-audio-only feature. If you use a soundbar or other audio system that takes its feed from a TV’s HDMI ARC or optical output, you won’t be able to hear the Clear Dialogue effect.
However, Clear Dialogue will work with connected TV headphones, whether they’re wired or wireless — handy for those who need every advantage when it comes to understanding what’s being said.
When Sony released its latest Bravia TVs, it announced Voice Zoom 3, which attempts to do a very similar thing to DTS Clear Dialogue. However, Voice Zoom 3 need both a Sony Bravia TV and a Sony Bravia Theater Bar soundbar to achieve its maximum dialogue clarity.