Audience Announces Next Generation Voice Processor for Mobile Phones

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Jan. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Audience, Inc. a global provider of advanced voice and audio processors, today announced the latest generation of its industry-leading dynamic noise suppression solutions for mobile phones with the new A1026 Voice Processor chip. Featuring improved performance features and a highly integrated, more compact and energy-efficient design, the A1026 processor significantly improves mobile call quality in noisy environments by suppressing background noise, intermittent sounds and echoes - whether surrounding the caller or the person they're speaking with - to enable clear communications.

The third generation in the Audience line of advanced voice processors based on the intelligence of the human hearing system, the A1026 is a single, mixed-signal system-on-chip (SOC) solution that integrates with two microphones in a mobile phone to uniquely identify the primary voice in conversation and eliminate surrounding noise. It also automatically adjusts voice volume and equalization during calls to adapt to local noise interference. For mobile customers, the technology significantly improves the quality of voice communications.

"Audience is continuing to advance our noise suppression technology to allow users to communicate when and where they want to, without having to adapt phone usage to surrounding noise," said Peter Santos, president and chief executive officer, Audience. "We are committed to working with our customers and partners to provide new voice and audio processing solutions that significantly enhance the mobile communications experience by delivering greater call clarity, ease of use, and flexible design integration."

Audience's dynamic noise suppression technology is based on reverse-engineering the human hearing system. By understanding and replicating the human auditory pathway - from the inner ear to the brainstem, thalamus and cortex - Audience is the first company to deliver commercial products based on the science of Computational Auditory Scene Analysis (CASA) to manage the grouping and processing of complex mixtures of sound. Operating in much the same manner as people naturally perceive sounds, the A1026 voice processor in a mobile device can distinguish and evaluate sound signals to identify the primary conversation, and efficiently and effectively suppress surrounding background noise, to enable clear calls even in noisy environments.

For handset manufacturers, the new A1026 voice processor is designed to deliver energy-efficiency and easy integration into mobile devices, improving speed-to-market. It also offers new features to enhance performance, including:

• Powerful Processing: the A1026 chip includes a low-power, high-performance custom Digital Signal Processor (DSP) core that delivers industry-leading stationary and non-stationary noise suppression, acoustic echo cancellation (AEC), and Programmable Voice Equalization (VEQ) algorithms.
• Easy Integration: the A1026 voice processor is provided in a highly compact 2.7mm x 3.5mm, 40-pin WLCSP (0.5mm pitch) package that can fit any handset style or design and easily integrates into existing mobile phone architectures. It also provides an auto-calibration feature eliminating the need to make per-unit adjustments on the production line.
• Energy-Efficiency: the A1026 voice processor delivers approximately 30% power reduction from previous generation products in standard talk mode.
• Performance Advancements: the new A1026 processor includes customizable voice quality tuning capabilities, a Post-Equalization Filter that allows handset manufacturers to manage frequency response, and a Multi-band Compander (MBC) to improve audio quality and reduce distortion for end-users when receiving communication, or using the phone's speaker phone function.

Audience voice processor technology is available across a wide array of mobile devices around the world and the next generation A1026 chip will be launching in mobile handsets as early as first quarter, 2010.

About Audience

Audience is a voice processor semiconductor company that enables clear communications anywhere with dynamic noise suppression technology based on the intelligence of the human hearing system. The technology is applicable across a broad range of consumer products where voice needs to be intelligible in noisy environments. Audience was the Silver Winner in the 2008 Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Awards and the Winner of the Semiconductor category. The company was included in Gartner's "Cool Vendors in Semiconductors, 2008" and selected as the Most Innovative True Mobile Start-Up for the "2008 GSMA Mobile Innovation Global Awards." Audience is one of 34 founding member companies of the Open Handset Alliance and the only provider of advanced noise suppression technology. Investors in Audience include New Enterprise Associates, Vulcan Capital, Tallwood Venture Capital and VentureTech Alliance. Audience is based in Mountain View, California. www.audience.com

SOURCE Audience, Inc.