Voice Quality Enhancement

Key Technologies in Consilient's Voice Quality Enhancement

Acoustic Echo Cancellation

Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC) is a crucial technology in modern voice communication systems. Echoes can significantly degrade the quality of voice calls, causing distractions and making conversations challenging to follow. AEC identifies and eliminates echoes, ensuring that only the clear, intended voice is transmitted.

Benefits of Acoustic Echo Cancellation:

• 

  Improved Call Clarity: Eliminates disruptive echoes, providing a clear and natural sound.

• 

  Enhanced User Experience: Reduces listener fatigue, making long conversations more comfortable.

• 

  Increased Productivity: Facilitates more effective communication in professional settings, leading to better collaboration and decision-making.

Noise Suppression

Noise Suppression is essential for maintaining high voice quality in noisy environments. Background noise, such as traffic, wind, or office chatter, can interfere with voice communication, making it hard for the listener to understand the speaker. Consilient's Noise Suppression technology filters out unwanted background noise, focusing on the speaker's voice.

Benefits of Noise Suppression:

• 

  Clearer Communication: Removes distracting background noises, ensuring the speaker's voice is prominent.

• 

  Versatility: Effective in various environments, from busy streets to quiet offices.

• 

  Better Listener Experience: Enhances the overall quality of calls, making them more pleasant and effective.

Automatic Gain Control (AGC) and Dynamic Range Compression (DRC)

AGC/DRC provides continuous automatic gain adjustment in the microphone and loudspeaker signals, enhancing perceived audio loudness and ensuring clear intelligibility. Consilient’s AGC algorithm is robust to ambient noises and allows fast signal equalization without increasing ambient noise. The gain changes depending on the amplitude, the limiter level, the compression ratio, and the attack and release time. The gain changes constantly as the audio signal increases and decreases to create the compression effect.

Howling Control

Howling can occur in a full-duplex communication link with echo at both ends or coupling paths, creating feedback loops, which can be a severe issue. Howling control detects instability as it occurs and takes action to mitigate feedback looping (gain). Consilient’s HC detection algorithm is robust against false detections.

Mic Beamforming

Mic Beamforming is an advanced technique that uses multiple microphones to capture and isolate the speaker's voice while ignoring surrounding noise. By focusing on the speaker's direction, Mic Beamforming enhances voice clarity and reduces background interference.

Benefits of Mic Beamforming:

• 

  Focused Voice Capture: Isolates the speaker's voice, providing clear and precise audio.

• 

  Reduced Background Noise: Minimizes the impact of ambient sounds, improving call quality.

• 

  Enhanced Mobility: The speaker can move freely without affecting voice clarity.

Additional Technical Information

Consilient offers robust, optimized algorithms for Voice Quality Enhancement (VQE), suitable for IP phones, Analog Terminal Adapters, Smart speakers, and Wearables. VQE algorithms are available on various ARM, MIPS, DSP, and other microcontroller architectures.