METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR MAINTAINING SPEECH AUDIBILITY IN MULTI-CHANNEL AUDIO WITH MINIMAL IMPACT ON SURROUND EXPERIENCE

In one embodiment the present invention includes a method of improving audibility of speech in a multi-channel audio signal. The method includes comparing a first characteristic and a second characteristic of the multi-channel audio signal to generate an attenuation factor. The first characteristic corresponds to a first channel (101) of the multi-channel audio signal that contains speech and non-speech audio, and the second characteristic corresponds to a second channel (102) of the multi-channel audio signal that contains predominantly non-speech audio. The method further includes adjusting the attenuation factor according to a speech likelihood value (113) to generate an adjusted attenuation factor. The method further includes attenuating the second channel using the adjusted attenuation factor.