DSP Concepts’ Audio Weaver platform already powers more than 50M devices for many of the world’s best consumer and automotive brands. With the launch of TalkTogether, the Californian company adds a new trending concept to basically create “intercom” features between voice-enabled or communication-optimized connected devices - an idea that Apple recently explored and highly promoted in its HomePod mini Smart Speaker. TalkTogether joins the nearly 500 market-proven modules available through Audio Weaver, which was specifically designed to accelerate every step of the development process and reduce risk at every turn.
Additionally, product makers can combine TalkTo - DSP Concepts’ voice front end - with TalkTogether to enable voice commands, like setting the volume or ending the call, while on the call. Building with TalkTogether through Audio Weaver allows for rapid integration with any personal, gaming, work, or public communications device. Since Audio Weaver is hardware agnostic and can be deploy in all the most popular processing platforms and hardware, this allows brands to explore many different possibilities to connect different classes, from wearables to smart home products.
From being on-the-go with a Bluetooth puck speaker to taking a meeting in the boardroom, TalkTogether can address nearfield to far field voice calls in the new hybrid global workplace.
Additionally, in a departure from traditional audio IP, DSP Concepts has actually opened up TalkTogether so developers can adjust the module to meet their precise needs.
DSP Concepts CEO Chin Beckmann notes the ample market opportunity for TalkTogether and the value of opening it up for developers: “Whether you’re designing a smart exercise machine that lets people talk to their friends, or a soundbar that delivers clear, long-range voice for Zoom meetings and Xbox gaming sessions, the power and value of voice has never been more evident. Unfortunately, product makers are often reliant on black-box third party voice solutions to deliver high quality experiences. With TalkTogether, we remove that risk and complexity, open the black box so designers can customize every part of their design, and allow them to quickly bring their innovations to market.”
TalkTogether is also Alexa Calling, Messaging and Announcements (ACM) certified, removing yet another common barrier for bringing voice designs to market. DSP Concepts is also promising to announce further industry standard conferencing platform certifications in the next several months.
Primary components that make up TalkTogether include microphone arrays, direction of arrival (DoA), beamforming, VAD, noise reduction, de-reverb, AEC, residual echo cancellation, Tx and Rx AGCs and reduction of external noises such as keyboard clicks.
DSP Concepts CTO Paul Beckmann emphasizes how the launch of TalkTogether further advances the company’s mission to simplify audio development and accelerate time to market for innovative products. “The core mission of Audio Weaver has always been to give product makers a trusted framework that simplifies and accelerates every step of the audio design process so that engineers can focus on innovation, and TalkTogether is a natural extension of that mission. We have over 500 optimized processing modules in Audio Weaver, and each of them can take weeks or months of work off a designer’s plate. Sometimes a challenge is so complex or a category is so large that it demands an even more sophisticated design like TalkTo or TalkTogether, and it’s not an overstatement to say that these solutions can save years spent on designing, debugging, tuning, and certifying their product.”
With TalkTogether, Audio Weaver provides designers with an even wider range of audio capabilities, flexible enough to deploy designs for different vertical applications featuring full duplex calls on device and through OTT applications such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom, all with noise suppression for indoor/outdoor environments including wind noise reduction, double talk, music playback and device noise cancellation.
The Audio Weaver module also supports multi-mic configurations combined with fixed or adaptive beamformer with SCNR for directional voice pickup, speaker tracking, and automatic gain matching for reliable speech quality. Developers can also freely explore a full suite of loudspeaker processing algorithms that can be tuned jointly with TalkTogether.
“The market opportunity for voice is growing rapidly, propelled by enhancements in the underlying technologies. Shipments of voice-enabled products are forecast to reach 3.0 billion devices annually by 2024, contributing towards an installed base exceeding 7.8 billion globally. Product designers are now harnessing opportunity to further refine their voice solutions, utilizing the dual advantages of edge-based AI and audio processing technologies integrated directly into silicon chips. We expect this to give rise to domain-specific voice assistants and improve the capabilities of ‘voice first’ interfaces, as the market matures further. DSP Concepts assembles the essential voice components into a flexible, low-code framework; this removes a lot of the barriers and risk that come from mixing and matching third-party solutions,” notes Simon Forrest, Principal Technology Analyst at Futuresource.
TalkTogether is already implemented in Milo, a Kickstarter project that clearly excited the imagination of radical sports and outside adventure enthusiasts, where 5,747 backers pledged $2.5 million USD to help bring the project to life. The okmilo.com concept uses a mesh network of device-to-device wireless technology to facilitate communications in a compact device designed for outdoor recreation - areas without Wi-Fi or even cell signals.
“The accelerated development time we achieved by building on Audio Weaver has been crucial to Milo’s success, but just as important is its unique position as an ‘all-in-one’ solution for audio development. Bringing TalkTogether to Audio Weaver is very valuable, and the fact they've opened it up so developers can customize the module for their application's precise needs is a true game changer. We would not choose to build on any other platform,” says Milo CEO and founder Dr. Peter Celinski.
www.dspconcepts.com
