Los Angeles, CA (September 23, 2025)―Re-recording mixer Larry Benjamin’s constant search for dialogue intelligibility tools recently led him to Nugen Audio’s new DialogCheck plug-in, which he’s since used on projects like Netflix’s new Jude Law/Jason Bateman hit, Black Rabbit.
Based at NBC Universal, the 11-time Emmy-nominated mixer has spent over three decades mixing dialogue and music for shows like Ozark, Better Call Saul and others. Whether it’s creating a sonic POV inside a character’s mind or blending ambient tension into a dialogue-heavy scene, Benjamin’s mixes help shape how viewers feel.
At a time when audiences often complain about not being able to hear actors’ lines, Benjamin is fighting for clarity. One of his biggest obstacles, however, is the home entertainment setup. “The speakers on modern TVs are often very small and face the wall, which just doesn’t cut it,” he explains. “I’m always trying to create a mix that translates across all devices. Even if you listen on a laptop, you should still be able to hear all the words.”
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To help navigate these challenges, Benjamin, already an avid Nugen Audio user, started incorporating the band’s DialogCheck into his workflow, deploying it for his work on season two of Poker Face and a new Vince Gilligan project coming to Apple TV+.
“It’s another tool in the arsenal for creating a standard. It’s a real-time snapshot into where you are in the process,” Benjamin explains. “It doesn’t have bias or hearing loss, it just judges where the spoken word sits in the mix. It’s an agnostic tool that just tells you whether the dialogue is intelligible compared to everything else.”
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Though new to his workflow, Benjamin sees DialogCheck as a promising safety net, especially as speech intelligibility is more scrutinized than ever. He tested the plug-in in both real-time on the master tracks and offline using AudioSuite.
“The measurements were very close,” he says. “It gave me confidence that I was in the desired range for dialogue intelligibility, even in scenes with whispers or loud music.” On these projects, DialogCheck gave the spoken content scores that confirmed his mixes were hitting the mark. “It offers a qualitative judgement of where dialogue should sit, which is exactly what I need.”
