Evaluating hearables for augmenting TV audio in shared viewing environments

The TV remains the preferred device for shared audiovisual media consumption in the home; however, its limited ability to cater to individual preference in these scenarios can be a hindrance. The increasing ubiquity of devices in the home and the ability to connect them through wireless communication protocols presents a good opportunity to overcome this challenge. Hearables with ‘hear-through’ transparency features offer the potential to provide personal audio in shared TV viewing environments. A listening test (n=30) was conducted to observe how various TV mix content could be rendered over hearables, with concurrent TV audio perceived over a transparency mode, and how those options affect preference and dialogue clarity of content. The results show that mirroring the full mix or the dialogue on the hearables is preferred equally to the open-ear TV condition, however is less preferred than the hearables only condition. An improvement in dialogue clarity was observed in cases where dialogue in the original mix was challenging to perceive. Variance in both preference and dialogue clarity attributes highlights the requirement for personal mix control in shared viewing environments.