Voice Heralds Next Generation Features in Wireless Speakers and Smart Home Applications

While IFA 2016 was in full swing in Berlin, Germany, technology market research specialists Futuresource Consulting highlighted the importance that voice will play in next generation CE products. Following earlier announcements from Amazon, Google and Harman, the Berlin consumer electronics show was rich in product previews and demonstrations about the future of personal assistants and voice recognition applications.

Google, the company that makes a business out of anything that’s Open Source, announced its new Omnitone project, a platform that they say “brings spatial audio to the web in order to provide more immersive VR experiences, using only the Web Audio API.” The platform uses all the known spatial audio, ambisonics and binaural techniques, including several existing open source efforts, now released on a set of integrated tools that enable exploring immersive audio or spatial audio directly on a web browser.

In its continuing effort to compete with every single technology company on Earth in order to expand its own software and services ecosystem, no matter the cost, Google announced a new set of hardware launches. Among the products announced there’s a $35 Chromecast Audio device that turns any powered speaker into a networked wireless audio system via Wi-Fi, with support for Spotify Connect direct streaming.

The Fraunhofer IIS team responsible for the development and market launch of the Cingo and Symphoria immersive 3D audio algorithms and software solutions for digital audio playback has been awarded the 2015 Joseph von Fraunhofer Prize, awarded every year in recognition of outstanding scientific work.