Audience has announced its latest Advanced Voice processor the earSmart S325, designed to dramatically improve the voice experience on smartphones and tablets
You might not have heard of Audience before, the company makes voice processors for mobile devices, tiny chips just 3x3mm wide, which improve the clarity of voice quality and reduce background noise in mobile devices. If you’ve got a Samsung Galaxy S3, Apple iPhone 4S or Samsung Galaxy Note 2 smartphones or Google Nexus 10 tablet the chances are you benefitting from its technology already.
The earSmart eS325 is Audience’s third-generation chip and it supports three microphones improving the signal-to-noise ratio in noisy environments by 30-55 per cent. Other features of the chip include: ASR Assist Technology improves the audio clarity of applications that use speech (such as Google Now), De-Reverb removes room echo effect, Super Wideband improves voice quality of audio in VoIP video services like Skype and Bandwidth Expansion technology ensures consistency when swapping between 3G and 4G networks.
“The Audience earSmart eS325 raises the bar for mobile voice quality, delivering a host of exciting features and technologies that transform a consumer’s experience of using speech to communicate, interact and connect through their mobile device,” said Robert Schoenfield, vice president of marketing and business development, Audience. “With many leading manufacturers already engaged with us, we expect to see the earSmart eS325 Advanced Voice processor play an important role in this year’s most exciting mobile devices.”
The earSmart eS325 (in common with the previous two earSmart incarnations) supports HD Voice. HD Voice is a feature you’ll be hearing about more and more. Calls are made using a wide range of frequencies, resulting in a dramatic improvement to voice quality. Orange and Three support the standard and it’s found in increasing numbers of phones such as the Sony Xperia E, Huawei Ascend D Q and HTC One X.
We met up with Audience to get a demonstration of the chips and we were very impressed – particularly it’s effectiveness with Google Now and in a series of simulated environments such as street and loud music.
Audiences technology has been used in Android, iOS and Windows Phone smartphone at a range of price points. The technology is built in, so it’s likely you won’t realise it’s there, although Huawei lists it in the HTC Ascend D quad information sheet and the Samsung Galaxy S3 has Samsung specific option to turn it on/off.
The earSmart eS325 Advanced Voice Processor will be shipping in smartphones and tablets by the end of April. Audience could not confirm which phones will include the chip, but following its appearance in the Samsung Galaxy S3, the Samsung Galaxy S4 looks like a respectable bet.
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