IRVINE, Calif., May 4, 2017 – Conexant, a leading provider of audio and voice technology solutions that enable a more natural user experience, today announced a 4-microphone version of its popular AudioSmart™ Development Kit for Alexa Voice Service (AVS). This builds upon other recent announcements that will help device-makers integrate Alexa into their products. Conexant enables third-party developers and manufacturers to achieve far-field performance at a lower Bill of Materials (BOM) cost and has the supply chain in place today to support large volume applications.

Conexant’s Smart Source Locator™ (SSL) technology is a newly added feature for the 4-microphone solution that provides many benefits, such as giving the voice processor the ability to focus in on the direction from where the user’s voice is coming. Combining SSL with Conexant’s Smart Source Pickup™ (SSP), that provides 360-degree noise suppression, translates to higher speech recognition accuracy. This is especially helpful in challenging environments where there are noises emanating in the room, such as from a TV, radio or phone.

“We’re excited to continue our work with Conexant as they offer another quality solution for device makers looking to integrate with Alexa,” said Priya Abani, Director, Alexa Voice Service. “Conexant’s new AudioSmart 4-mic Development Kit for Amazon AVS broadens the selection of reference solutions available to OEMS, speeding up time to market and making it easier to integrate AVS into their products.”

The core component of the AudioSmart 4-mic Development Kit for Amazon AVS is Conexant’s AudioSmart CX20924 Voice Input Processor running Conexant’s far-field voice pre-processing software technology. Conexant’s far-field voice input processor focuses on the user’s voice and removes echoes and noise from the audio signal, providing clear voice requests for speech recognition processing. Additionally, the AudioSmart 4-mic Development Kit for Amazon AVS comes equipped with Conexant’s CX22721 Low Power Audio Playback CODEC that can power small speakers and be tuned for optimal audio quality for music and Alexa voice prompts.

The new AudioSmart 4-mic Development Kit for Amazon AVS will save engineering time and reduce costs related to developing noise robust, far-field voice-enabled devices. Beyond prototyping, Conexant expedites time-to-market by directly providing third-party manufacturers with cost-effective, production-ready hardware solutions, voice pre-processing software technology and unrivaled engineering support. Key benefits of the Conexant AudioSmart CX20924 Voice Input Processor include:

• Robust far-field voice interaction with four microphones
• Proprietary Smart Source Locator™ technology identifies the direction from which the user’s voice is coming
• Enhanced Smart Source Pickup noise suppression technology – robust to 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 Alexa wake word even when the device is playing music or voice prompts loudly

“As proven over the last few months by the explosive growth in third-party devices with Amazon Alexa featuring Conexant’s voice processing solutions, the voice revolution is in full swing,” said Saleel Awsare, President of Conexant. “We are excited to further fuel this growth by working with Amazon to expand our offering of development kits that make it easier, faster and more cost-effective to prototype and develop new devices with Alexa. Our 4-mic development kit addresses the various challenges associated with creating voice-enabled devices, cutting required engineering time down significantly.”

Conexant’s new AudioSmart 4-Mic Development Kit and recently released AudioSmart 2-Mic Development Kit are both available through Arrow Electronics, and can be used for prototyping running AVS java sample client software on Raspberry Pi.

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