Control of a volume leveling unit using two-stage noise classifier

A method for applying volume leveling of an audio signal including a plurality of time segments each consisting of a set of N frames, the method comprising:

• providing a volume leveling control signal,
• applying volume leveling to the audio signal using the volume leveling control signal,
• identifying, in a current time segment, all noise-like frames which are likely to contain noise, and determining a noise reliability ratio w(n) as a ratio of noise-like frames over all frames in the current time segment;
• determining, for the current time segment, a professionally generated content, PGC, noise confidence score xPGC(n) indicating a likelihood that PGC noise is present in the current time segment;
• determining, for the current time segment, whether the noise reliability ratio is above a predetermined threshold;
• and
• when the noise reliability ratio is above the predetermined threshold, updating the volume leveling control signal based on the PGC noise confidence score, and when the noise reliability ratio is below the predetermined threshold, keeping the volume leveling control signal unchanged.