Voice Capture Challenges: The Threshold of the Golden Age of Voice

Voice processing and recognition leading to the development of voice-based personal assistants is one of the decade’s greatest achievements and provides a unique opportunity for the audio industry. Leveraging those sophisticated technologies now available to the consumer electronics industry makes the investment on new designs much more exciting. In this article, Mike Klasco provides an introduction to the voice capture, signal processing and voice recognition challenges. This article was originally published in audioXpress, December 2018.

Voice-enabled devices are quickly becoming commonplace in nearly every region and for every consumer demographic. Whether making cloud-connected or offline products, OEMs need to understand what’s driving this demand for voice. Unlike some new product features, adding a voice interface requires product architects to make a number of highly-impactful, interconnected design decisions. Development teams don’t have it easy either, as integrating microphones in a product introduces another layer of complexity.

DSP Concepts has launched TalkTo, a new brand and a major expansion of its voice recognition technologies. TalkTo is a family of software-based Audio Front Ends for voice-controlled products. It uses advanced microphone processing and machine learning techniques to deliver highly reliable voice control, even in high-noise environments and with multichannel audio products. According to the company, TakTo will enable voice interfaces even in the most difficult classes of products, like TVs and soundbars.