REMEMBER VOICE?

LAS VEGAS-Flashback to CTIA Wireless 2006: As former Nokia Corp. CEO Jorma Ollila gave his farewell address to the industry two years ago this spring, he exhorted his audience to keep working on the basics.
“There’s more to be done with voice,” Ollila said at the time.
Flash forward to CTIA Wireless 2008: “It’s still a voice-centric world,” said Clint Wheelock, analyst with ABI Research, in a session at the event.
People still select a carrier using basic metrics such as voice quality, Wheelock said, and displeasure with voice quality is a leading cause of churn.
Carriers do voice quality/noise suppression work that is network-based. But the handset is where the transmit signal begins. The noise needing suppression is more likely to be moving, relative to the handset user, a disadvantage for network-based solutions.
Thus handset-based voice quality and noise suppression is where several parties have focused their work.
While the mega-brands Nokia, Research In Motion Ltd. and Motorola Inc., with its branded CrystalTalk product, have developed in-house solutions, a small number of other vendors are having a go at the space.
Audience, Forte Media, SoftMax (recently acquired by Qualcomm Inc.) all take slightly different tacks.
“Many are trying, few are succeeding,” said Peter Santos, CEO of Audience. “There’s a tendency to underestimate how to do this well.”
Audience demonstrated its product with the help of an isolation booth. The demonstrated consisted of someone sitting in the booth with a handset and having Audience’s Jennifer Stagnaro, VP of marketing, call and proceed to talk, while an Apple Inc. iPod docking station blared loud music. As the company’s noise suppression and voice quality product is switched on, the caller’s voice retained its human warmth and subtleties while the racket in the background pretty much disappeared.
Santos said that Audience’s product combines software and a chip of its own manufacture and a system of dual microphones that split the signal. The Audience solution keeps the original signal intact to preserve desirable voice qualities, while using the second signal to profile the background noise so that subsequent suppression of that noise doesn’t rob the voice signal of its subtleties.
The goal is to maximize the signal improvement while drawing the minimum of power, Santos said.
Audience’s differentiator – apart from Santos’ claim the company offers the best voice quality/noise suppression technology in the business – is that most technologies address stationary noise. Audience’s product targets non-stationary noise, which is more likely the real-world challenge, according to Santos.
The improved voice signal goes not only to the receiving party but to the speaker’s own earpiece, which allows one to speak softly in challenging environments. This could well cut down on the caller’s need to speak loudly in public – one of mobile-phone users’ most annoying public habits.
Challenges include scaling the solution and driving standards, Santos said. But the company has been aided by its first major OEM customer – TBA soon – with product to launch initially in Asian markets.
Audience’s backers include Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital, NEA, Tallwood Venture Capital, VentureTech Alliance and the TSMC Foundry, where its products are fabricated.
Audience and its big-player backers aren’t stopping at voice quality for the mobile industry. Its solution is based on reverse engineering of the human hearing process (two ears = two microphones, e.g.) and that promises to unlock technologies for other purposes in other fields, Santos said. An IPO is likely in the offing, when multiple products demonstrate the company’s value, he said.
“We’re looking to stay independent,” he said.
Another example of voice quality/noise suppression efforts is Motorola’s CrystalTalk. It is a single-mic solution that uses signal processing algorithms based in a digital signal processor (DSP) chip.
“Voice is still the ‘killer app’ – that’s a philosophy and a cliche,” said Joel Clark, a senior manager of audio and acoustic technologies at Motorola. “I’ve been doing audio and acoustic design for 20 years at Motorola and, day-in, day-out, I dealt with noise. We made a mission to attack it.”
“We push MP3 players and multimedia, but everyone wants to make or take a clear call,” Clark said.
Therefore, Motorola has provided its CrystalTalk solution across its portfolio, from the Razr2 and the Q smartphone down to the W series for emerging markets.
“This is key to our entry-tier products,” Clark said, “because we want to win the upgrade sale as well.”
Both parties use engineering metrics and human testers to analyze the effectiveness of their solution, but both appeared to agree that the ultimate test is producing a “wow” in the consumer experience.