Express Paper
Capturing audience film sound preferences
AES Convention 155 · Paper 179 · October 2023
Abstract
The concerns of the public on poor sound experience in TV and streaming platforms often drive content creators and organizations to try to improve the situation. Yet, the current trend is that of a subtle revision to existing standards along with utilizing legacy, outdated, and occasionally ineffective methods. These standards and recommendations do not fully consider the wide variety of mobile, and stationary playback hardware available, nor the acoustics of the playback environments or even background noise. In addition, the diversity of the population needs is often overlooked – accessibility or otherwise - and fail to fully address audience preferences. There are both data driven and anecdotal reasons to question the effectiveness of the current standards in their present form. An audience survey (n = 500) was undertaken to better understand film experiences along with reproduction hardware preferences and relative listening levels. Results provide an insight into audience preferences, and behavior watching films across different mediums. The results will be utilized to develop an adaptive mixing framework to deliver personalized listening experiences on stationary and mobile devices.
