Audience, a company known in the industry for the quality of its hardware audio processing algorithms is launching a software version of their product. This will allow PC makers to greatly increase the quality of voice applications and services running on computers.
Audience started as a mobile company, and one of the reasons why they built small chips to run these algorithms is because a hardware solution is extremely more power-efficient than using a software one (running on a high-powered CPU).
In the PC market, it’s not as much of a problem, and PC-makers are much more willing to update a sound driver than adding hardware (for cost reasons). Although Audience may eventually license its technology to established PC audio chip-makers such as Realtek, S1.0 seems like a great entry into this market. Some PC-Makers did integrate Audience’s chips, but that seems to be harder to scale.
Audience S1.0 features pretty much the same functionality as the eS700 Series hardware, which I reported on earlier in the year. If you are unfamiliar with Audience, its technology can clean up voice signal, remove keyboard clicks and unwanted background sounds, and even pre-process voice to make it easier for voice-recognition software to understand, thus making the use experience better — in a completely non-intrusive way.
At the moment, only new PCs will be equipped with this audio upgrade, although it’s not yet clear which models (and which brand) will use it. Intel is quite enthusiastic about voice commands, so I expect them to support this kind of initiative.
Incidentally, Audience is also releasing new hardware: the Audience eS800 chip has been designed to make voice much clearer, even at greater distances (5 yards+), which should help a host of applications, from audio/video conferencing to TV and appliances voice commands. Today, most applications assume that the user is close to the microphone (webcam or phone), and the current model doesn’t work so well for farther apps – even the new Kinect could use some help there.
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