Patent 7551745 was granted and assigned to Dolby Laboratories on June, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A single control determines both volume and the degree of compression in the reproduction of motion picture soundtracks. For some settings of the control, compression or limiting reduces the highest levels on a movie soundtrack, leaving the dialogue level substantially unchanged, thus removing the reason for complaints from the audience without the danger of making the dialogue too quiet for intelligibility.