BBK Partners With Audience for Improved Speech Pocessing on Mobile Phones

Audience, a provider of advanced voice and audio processing for mobile devices, announced that the Audience earSmart eS305 processor was selected by BBK for the new vivo X1 smartphone.

The vivo X1 ileverages Audience earSmart technology to increase the accuracy of mobile speech recognition with Audience's Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) Assist technology. As the use of voice interface for hands-free operation of mobile phones becomes increasingly important, the dependability of cloud or device speech recognition is becoming a key differentiator for the leading edge of the smartphone market, the companies said.

"BBK has a technical powerhouse in the vivo X1 smartphone," said Andy Keane, vice president of marketing at Audience, in a statement. "They are delivering an outstanding feature set in an incredibly sleek package while responding to the consumer demand for a superior voice and audio experience. The Audience earSmart advanced voice processor is the key component in delivering that experience. By working with industry innovators like BBK we are creating a far better ASR experience that will be the key to realizing the promise of voice as the user interface of the future."

ASR Assist is a set of hardware-accelerated algorithms that isolate voice energy to improve the accuracy of speech-enabled applications regardless of surrounding environmental noise. 

The BBK vivo X1 uses Audience ASR Assist technology to analyze the primary speaker's voice and surrounding audio environment. The vivo X1 then processes this data for improved application performance, accuracy and task completion, even in noisy, distracting environments.

"BBK chose Audience because we wanted to work with the leader in voice processing technology," said Feng Lei, director of marketing at BBK, in the statement. "Delivering seamless ASR Assist capabilities as part of the best voice experience is a key differentiator for the vivo X1 smartphone. Audience earSmart technology builds on and accelerates the BBK vision of delivering the best smartphone experience to our customers."