Apple Updates All Hardware and Software at WWDC17 and Announces HomePod Speaker

Apple's opening keynote for its Worldwide Developers Conference 2017 (WWDC17) at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, was a swirl of long expected announcements, wrapped in surprising underlying technology revelations. Among the many announcements was the preview of Apple's new home music speaker with built-in-far-field voice recognition powered by Apple Siri, the HomePod. As expected, the design is a powerful combination of electroacoustic mastery, digital processing and smart connectivity.

Speech and audio quality specialists, HEAD acoustics GmbH from Herzogenrath, Germany, will be presenting its range of solutions at the Mobile World Congress (​​February 27 to March 2, 2017). Like many key development technology companies, HEAD acoustics will use the Barcelona show to demonstrate a new evaluation software of VoCAS (Voice Control Analysis System), as well as an update of its communication analysis software ACQUA 3.5.100.

XMOS and Sensory have announced a partnership to deliver Sensory’s TrulyHandsfree voice control technology on the XMOS xCORE-VOICE far-field voice capture processing platform. TrulyHandsfree is the latest generation of voice keyword detection software from Sensory, a recognized provider of speech recognition solutions. The partnership combines embedded speech capture with proven voice control technologies, with high accuracy and robust performance in noisy environments.

As reported, CEDIA 2016 was dominated with announcements of partnerships with Voice Personal Assistant technologies, including Amazon’s Alexa. Crestron even made an announcement earlier this year that they would not be exhibiting at the CEDIA show, later to be confirmed that Crestron would share demonstrations with selected partners, such as Sonos, and shared a booth with Amazon in order to demonstrate how homeowners can now ask Alexa to control music, lights, temperature, video distribution and other custom automation possibilities.

Prominent provider of voice-enabled controllers and music connectivity ICs, XMOS Ltd., has announced the appointment of Mark Lippett as President and Chief Executive Officer. Lippett, a 10-year veteran of XMOS, previously held VP Engineering and COO roles within the business. Prior to XMOS, he served as CTO of Ignios, and held engineering and marketing roles at Texas Instruments, Lucent and Madge Networks. Outgoing CEO, Nigel Toon, has assumed the role of Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Conexant announced that their AudioSmart software has been integrated into Qualcomm’s Hexagon digital signal processor family, found in over a billion smart devices worldwide. With Conexant’s audio software inside, consumers will benefit from clearer voice communication and accurate speech recognition from their smart devices, even in noisy conditions, up to five meters away from the target device.

Conexant’s new I2S audio Codec and AudioSmart software offers noise cancellation and full-duplex acoustic echo cancellation for tablets, allowing better voice quality even in noisy environments. Conexant also introduced a Linux software solution for voice control and communication in smart home products and unveiled its new Smart Voice Pickup (SVP) technology for headsets, based on its proprietary SSP noise suppression algorithm.