Neutralizing distortion in audio data

Abstract

A system and process for pre-distorting TV shows and/or movie media enables digital transmission of the media via MPEG4/AC3 (or AAC) or MPEG4/AC4 codec for broadcast or streaming over the Internet with enhanced speech intelligibility. Processing of the entire media file is performed using pre-distortion techniques and algorithms including NN models (which includes DNN, RNN, CNN, and similar NN models) that are trained on perceptual codec induced noise, quantization noise, dynamic power level adjustment, frequency response adjustment, pitch and glottal impulse response adjustment, and other techniques. The pre-distortion process is iterative, and all combinations of pre-distortions to combat perceptual codec noise are attempted, and the result scored by an automatic speech recognition engine. The best speech recognition results and highest intelligibility scores are considered to indicate the best pre-distortion to be applied. Once the best pre-distortion is applied, a single media file is then encoded for transmission.