SK Telecom and LG Electronics Introduce Phone Powered by Audience

Tag : and electronics
SEOUL, South Korea July 9, 2008 -- Audience, a leading voiceprocessor company specializing in
advanced noise suppression, said today that it has officiallylaunched its business in Korea. The company has been workingclosely with major mobile customers in Korea, including SK Telecomand LG Electronics, and is increasing its presence in the localmarket with the opening of a new support office in Seoul. With theAudience Voice Processor providing advanced non-stationary noisesuppression in the LG Electronics LG-SH400 mobile phone launched by SK Telecom last week, Koreanmobile users now have access to a leading-edge cell phone whichdelivers clear communications anywhere.
"We are thrilled to be working with such an innovative companyas Audience," said Byungrok Jung, SKT Manager of Mobile DeviceTeam. "Audience has the most impressive advanced noisesuppression solution in the market, and we believe that ourcustomers will have a much better communications experience innoisy places."
The Audience Voice Processor is the first custom IC that is modeledafter the most efficient and accurate auditory system, the humanhearing system. By understanding the entire auditory pathway - fromthe cochlea to the brainstem to the thalamus and cortex - Audienceis the first company to deliver a commercial product based on thescience of Auditory Scene Analysis (ASA), or the grouping andprocessing of complex mixtures of sound. Because the Audience VoiceProcessor handles signals the way people actually perceive specificsounds, it is able to identify and suppress noise sources in anextremely efficient and accurate manner.
As voice is the primary application for mobile phone usage, itremains at the top of consumers' minds for improvements in theirphones. According to a 2007 survey of 15,000 consumers in 37countries by Global Mobile Mindset, consumers wanted "louder,clearer voice quality" from their cell phones. Voice qualityranked as one of the top 5 improvements requested.
Just as the human auditory system can readily ignore backgroundnoises while focusing on a voice of interest, Audience's technologyenables instantaneous noise suppression up to 25 dB for bothstationary and non-stationary noise sources to provide unparalleledvoice quality within even the noisiest environments.
Using this proprietary core technology, the Audience A1010 VoiceProcessor provides the most powerful and robust noise suppressiontechnology available today. By using a mobile handset that has theA1010 embedded in it, the caller can eliminate most of thebackground stationary and non-stationary noise sources -- such asairport PA systems, restaurant noise, car noise, acoustic echo andstreet noise -- regardless of whether the noise is local to thecaller or remote over the mobile network. This results in a higherquality user experience, as well as stress-free and more productivevoice communications over mobile networks or VoIP applications,such as PC telephony and video conferencing, in places beforeunimagined.
"With the Audience Voice Processor embedded in their mobilehandsets, people will be able to hear and be heard everywhere fromtheir cell phones, even in the noisiest places," said JenniferStagnaro, Audience VP of Marketing. "By mimicking the humanauditory system, our new processor defines a new standard forrobust noise suppression, enabling unprecedented voice quality andmore usability of rich voice and data applications."
"We are pleased to have an opportunity to provide mobilehandsets installed with our leading-edge noise suppressiontechnology to SK Telecom, Korea's largest mobile operator, throughLG Electronics," said Peter Santos, CEO of Audience."With Audience, Korean mobile users can benefit fromexperience with much improved communications quality." Headded that the company was looking for more business opportunitiesto contribute to providing better communications quality service toa larger number of mobile users in Korea, which is considered oneof the key mobile markets in the world.

About Audience
Audience is a voice processor company that enables clearcommunications anywhere with noise suppression technology based onthe intelligence of the human hearing system. The technology isapplicable across a broad range of consumer products where voiceneeds to be intelligible in noisy environments, and its firstcommercial product is for the mobile handset market. Audience wasselected as the Most Innovative True Mobile Start-Up for the"2008 GSMA Mobile Innovation Global Awards." The companyis one of 34 founding member companies of the Open Handset Allianceand the only one with advanced noise suppression technology.Investors in Audience include Vulcan Capital, NEA, Tallwood VentureCapital and VentureTech Alliance. Audience,http://www.audience.com, is based in Mountain View, California.

Information Source: PRNewswire
Image courtesy of http://renewal.openmobile.co.kr