Santa Clara, CA – DSP Concepts, Inc., a developer of embedded audio-processing solutions, 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 machine learning and advanced microphone-processing techniques to deliver highly reliable voice control, even in high-noise environments.
With TalkTo, product makers can now offer a satisfying, voice-based user experience in categories where it was previously impossible, such as set-top boxes, multichannel soundbars, kitchen appliances, and TVs. In these applications, voice recognition is challenging because the product’s microphones are subjected to a wide variety of loud, interfering sounds.
See a demo of TalkTo versus the 2nd-generation Amazon Echo here.
Most voice-controlled products can cancel the sound from their own speaker, but can do little or nothing to cancel the unpredictable noise sources in busy homes such as nearby TV’s, appliances, and music coming from other devices. TalkTo is far more advanced. It continually monitors the environment, learns the character of any interfering noise, then adapts its noise cancelling to provide a clean voice signal for local or cloud-based voice recognition engines. TalkTo is so sophisticated it can even cancel noise from multichannel sources such as soundbars — a task that completely overwhelms most voice control systems.
“We created TalkTo because consumers are now accustomed to the speed and convenience of a voice-based interface and are demanding that user experience in other products throughout their home — from controlling what’s on TV without finding the remote to dimming the lights without getting up or setting the microwave without washing your messy hands,” Chin Beckmann, CEO of DSP Concepts, said. “This demand places great stress on product-development teams trying to figure out how to configure and manage microphone arrays in these applications, where noise and interference can be extreme and unpredictable. By incorporating TalkTo and one of our recommended microphone topologies, design teams can deliver the user experience their customers are demanding.”
TalkTo variants are available for many different applications. These include:
Smart Speaker: Accommodates arrays from two to eight mics, and includes Adaptive Interference Cancellation™ (AIC) for industry-leading wake word recognition.
Multichannel Soundbar: TalkTo for soundbar includes DSP Concepts’ proprietary N-channel Acoustic Echo Canceller (AEC) and AIC to deliver reliable wake-word recognition, even at cinematic volume levels.
Smart Appliance & IoT: Achieves clear voice signals even with a variety of mic array configurations and in a wide range of product form factors.
TV & Smart Screen: Delivers reliable far-field voice recognition even with linear two or four-mic arrays.
Hearable / Wearable: Runs on small SoCs and DSPs and produces clean voice signals even in high-noise environments.
Battery-Powered Devices: Runs on low-power-consumption SoCs and DSPs, and uses on-demand noise-reduction and progressive wake-up to minimize current draw.
Set Top Box: Coming soon! Uses a circular array, and easily recognizes the wake word even in the presence of loud audio from a nearby TV or soundbar.
About DSP Concepts
DSP Concepts, Inc. provides embedded audio processing solutions, including its AWE Core™ audio processing engine, Audio Weaver® graphical development environment, and TalkTo™ line of software-based Audio Front Ends. DSP Concepts specializes in microphone processing, and is the leading supplier to top tier brands in automotive and consumer products. Founded by Dr. Paul Beckmann in 2003, DSP Concepts is headquartered in Santa Clara, California with offices in Boston, Stuttgart and Shanghai.
