IRVINE, Calif., June 20, 2017 – Conexant Systems, LLC, a leading provider of audio and voice technology solutions for enabling a more natural user experience, today announced it is collaborating with HARMAN International, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. focused on connected technologies for automotive, consumer and enterprise markets, to deliver premium end-to-end audio and voice solutions for manufacturers of voice-enabled devices.

Conexant’s market-proven far-field voice input processing technologies and system expertise, combined with HARMAN’s high performance audio solutions, will provide a superior user experience for voice-enabled smart home, automotive, and enterprise applications, even when used in high ambient noise environments.

“Voice is everywhere, we’re seeing it flourish in consumer electronics and appliances of all types, automobiles, robotics and even in work-place solutions,” said Saleel Awsare, President at Conexant. “By expanding our relationship with HARMAN to offer co-developed embedded far-field voice solutions, we’re able to offer an even greater selection of comprehensive premium audio and voice solutions to leading brands around the world, allowing them to produce innovative voice-enabled applications that offer accuracy and performance that is second-to-none.”

Technology that Enhances Performance and User Experience

Enabling speech recognition and voice control from a distance requires overcoming substantial acoustic challenges related to echo cancellation, background noise, microphone positions, speaker placement and more. Conexant’s engineers are experts in producing voice-as-an-interface solutions that do exactly that. The company’s 2 and 4-microphone voice processing solutions are designed to work well with any wake word and natural voice engine to deliver verbal commands from anywhere in the room, even in noisy, real-world environments. The solution also enables voice barge-in capabilities, allowing users to interrupt their voice-enabled device when it’s playing sound. Through this collaboration, Conexant and HARMAN will help customers reduce engineering time and development costs related to creating high performance, noise robust voice-enabled devices.

Offered in various microphone configurations for a wide variety of device applications and design identities, the core component of HARMAN’s 2 and 4-microphone high performance far-field voice solutions is Conexant’s AudioSmart voice input processors running Conexant’s industry-leading far-field voice pre-processing technology. Conexant’s AudioSmart voice input processor system captures the user’s voice from anywhere in the room, separates the voice commands from music and voice prompts being played out of the device, even with background noise present, and provides a clean audio signal to the AI system for speech recognition processing. This solution ensures that any connected speech recognition system hears only the user’s command, and nothing else, which in turn provides a consistently accurate and enjoyable voice-enabled user experience.

Dave Rogers, Senior Vice President, Consumer Audio at HARMAN added, “We expect the market for voice-controlled devices in the CE, Enterprise, and Robotics space to grow dramatically. Partnering with Conexant will enhance our foothold in this valuable market. We’re very excited about this partnership and the opportunities it will present to both parties.”

Key Benefits of the Conexant AudioSmart™ voice input processors include:

• Robust far-field voice interaction compatible with all major Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) services
• Optimal performance for both ASR and voice communication use cases
• Proprietary Smart Source Locator™ technology identifies the direction from which the user’s voice is coming
• Enhanced Smart Source Pickup noise suppression technology –ambient noise including non-stationary TV noise and voices coming from sources other than the user will be filtered out of the audio signal– providing better speech recognition performance
• Voice barge-in enabled by full duplex acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) – detects the wake word even when the device is playing music or voice prompts loudly

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About HARMAN International:
HARMAN International designs and engineers connected products and solutions for automakers, consumers, and enterprises worldwide, including connected car systems, audio and visual products, enterprise automation solutions; and services supporting the Internet of Things.  With leading brands including AKG®, Harman Kardon®, Infinity®, JBL®, Lexicon®, Mark Levinson® and Revel®, HARMAN is admired by audiophiles, musicians and the entertainment venues where they perform around the world. More than 50 million automobiles on the road today are equipped with HARMAN audio and connected car systems. Our software services power billions of mobile devices and systems that are connected, integrated and secure across all platforms, from work and home to car and mobile. HARMAN has a workforce of approximately 30,000 people across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. In March 2017, HARMAN became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.