Audience Introduces the earSmart eS515 – The World’s First Smart Sound Processor

Consumer demand has shifted to more sophisticated mobile devices with greater processing power, slimmer designs, larger displays and advanced multimedia features. Mobile device manufacturers are looking to tightly integrated processing solutions that deliver more capability, using less power. The earSmart eS515 Smart Sound Processor responds to this need by delivering a number of industry-first innovations: simultaneous 3-microphone processing, optimized Automatic Speech Recognition, Mobile Audio Zoom and Super Wideband support for Voice over IP (VoIP), combined with a robust audio codec designed specifically for the newest mobile devices.

“In recent months, Audience has demonstrated its commitment to delivering the best-sounding voice and audio experience on pioneering mobile devices like the Samsung Galaxy Note II, the Google Nexus 10, the Motorola Razr I, and the world’s thinnest Android smartphone, the BBK vivo X1,” said Peter Santos, president and CEO, Audience. “The earSmart eS515 Smart Sound Processor is the first product to offer our Advanced Voice technology integrated with a complete audio codec subsystem – it takes us to the next stage in sound processing, providing our customers with a level of performance, integration, efficiency and auditory presence never before experienced.”

Be Heard – With Best in Class Voice Processing

The earSmart eS515 features Audience’s third generation Advanced Voice technologies. The earSmart eS515 delivers the world’s first three-microphone technology where all three microphones can be used simultaneously to gather more environmental information around the user and deliver vastly improved voice quality. In addition, the earSmart eS515 supports high sample-rate VoIP calls, offering the industry’s best voice quality for narrowband and wideband networks. The earSmart eS515 is also the first sound processor to offer de-reverberation for mobile devices – removing the echo effect in spaces such as conference rooms and hallways.

Be Understood – With Optimized ASR Assist

ASR Assist technology from Audience directly addresses the challenge faced by many speech recognition applications today, namely their failure to recognize spoken words and complete assigned tasks because of disruptive background noise, especially for devices which are remote or held at a distance from the talker. The earSmart eS515 uses custom hardware-accelerated algorithms to isolate voice from surrounding environmental noise, dramatically improving the user experience of speech-enabled applications such as virtual assistants and voice search. Mobile devices equipped with Audience ASR Assist technology deliver improved speech application reliability, accuracy and task completion – even in noisy, distracting environments.

Be There – With Enhanced Media Capture and Playback

Mobile devices today are relied upon for media capture and consumption as much as they are for communication, and the desire for captured audio to have the same high-definition (HD) quality as video has never been stronger. The earSmart eS515 Smart Sound Processor features the world’s first multi-microphone 48 KHz noise suppression implementation for the recording of clean, HD audio. The earSmart eS515 also features Audio Zoom, the world’s first selective audio capture feature to be deployed for mobile devices. Audio Zoom allows users to dynamically switch between narrate mode, with a single speaker, to interview mode, where the person holding the device can “interview” another person. Interview mode leverages Audience’s industry leading background noise reduction technology to capture both voices with crystal clear accuracy.

Advanced Voice + Powerful Integrated Codec = Smart Sound Processor

The earSmart eS515 Smart Sound Processor is a high performance, audio processing solution with significant integration and flexibility. The solution includes an Audience Advanced Voice Processor core and a hardware accelerator engine, optimized to run computationally intensive audio algorithms with low power consumption. In addition, the earSmart eS515 processor includes a best-in-class stereo audio codec, previously available only in standalone solutions. The Audience codec subsystem consists of multiple analog to digital converters and digital to analog converters, as well as stereo class D speaker drivers, stereo class G headphone drivers, an earpiece driver, and two line outputs.