  Due to age-related hearing loss, elderly people often struggle with following
the language on TV. Because they form an increasing part of the audience, this
problem will become even more important in the future and needs to be addressed
by research and development. Object-based audio is a promising approach to
solve this issue as it offers the possibility of customizable dialogue
enhancement (DE). For this thesis an Adjustment / Satisfaction Test (A/ST) was
conducted to evaluate the preferred loudness difference (LD) between speech and
background in people above 65. Two different types of DE were tested: DE with
separately available audio components (speech and background) and DE with
components created by blind source separation (BSS). The preferred LDs compared
to the original, differences of the preferred LDs between the two DE methods
and the listener satisfaction were tested. It was observed that the preferred
LDs were larger than the original LDs, that customizable DE increases listener
satisfaction and that the two DE methods performed comparably well in terms of
preferred LD and listener satisfaction. Based on the results, it can be assumed
that elderly viewers above 65 will benefit equally from user-adjustable DE by
available components and by dialogue separation.
