Soundskrit, the audio technology company whose cutting-edge hardware and software promises to usher in a new era for microphone performance, today announced the availability of its first product, the SKR0400, the world’s first bio-inspired directional MEMS microphone built for current and future consumer electronics devices. With a powerful combination of performance, audio quality, and a small yet flexible form factor, Soundskrit’s revolutionary new microphone will become the go-to technology for OEMs around the world and reset expectations for consumers for decades to come.
Soundskrit, which first previewed the technology at CES 2018 to much fanfare, has developed a high-performance microphone that replaces traditional microphone arrays with a superior solution. The SKR0400 leverages a new transducer design for maximum audio performance, and taps into proprietary software that optimizes the audio experience for a wide range of devices and use cases in any environment. Microphones in devices including laptops, webcams, smart speakers, connected TVs, headsets and earbuds, AR/VR, medical devices, wearables, and connected vehicles will never be the same.
Moving audio performance forward
Audio quality from microphones has never been more important for consumers. The proliferation of video meetings and remote work; the rapid adoption of smart home, health devices and smart vehicles; the advent of augmented and virtual reality headsets, and introduction of True Wireless Sound (TWS) with capabilities such as voice calling active noise cancellation, transparency mode, spatial audio playback, etc. have all raised the bar for consumer expectations around audio quality and today’s microphone technology.
To date, consumer devices have had to use arrays of multiple omnidirectional microphones which struggle to isolate a desired voice from unwanted background noise, providing limited performance. And they do so at the cost of increased real estate, power consumption, and complexity. While traditional audio processing software attempts to find meaning out of all the noise, it can only go so far, removing key pieces of speech as it tries to filter out the unwanted noise leaving only an unnatural and distorted speech signal behind.
The SKR0400 is a first-of-its-kind directional MEMS microphone that inherently eliminates unwanted noise at the hardware level. Gone are the days of hard to hear voice calls, because the microphone does not hear the background noise in the first place. With a highly directional pickup pattern, the SKR0400 significantly reduces background noise and reverberation, isolating a user’s voice with high-fidelity. As the industry’s lowest noise directional MEMS microphone, the SKR0400 eliminates the need for large omnidirectional microphone arrays providing a small, low power, and lightweight solution with incredible performance. With minimal signal processing it enables a breadth of features from noise and echo reduction, true stereo recording for highly immersive audio content, and voice tracking.
“We experienced and saw the need for elevated audio without compromises – high performance, pristine sound, and that engineered new ways for humans to experience sound and not necessarily in the same manner we process sound ourselves,” said Stephane Leahy, Vice President of Hardware and Co-founder of Soundskrit. “We needed to create something small and directional, so we took inspiration from the smallest auditory systems in nature. We’ve created a microphone that truly isolates a speaker’s voice and delivers the highest-quality sound. We’re not stopping at just one microphone, Soundskrit is building and engineering audio for the future.”
Designed and inspired by nature
Soundskrit’s audio sensory technology reimagines sound capture based on how insects process sound versus humans – by responding to air flow rather than pressure. Smaller auditory systems in nature (i.e. insects) all use a different method to sense sound. Soundskrit drew inspiration for directionality in a small form factor from these sensing systems, which nature perfected over thousands of years.
The microphone transducer was designed from the ground up, based on these principals, to improve performance in directional microphones. By moving in sync with the surrounding air motion (sound) the transducer is able to accurately sense an incoming sound wave and convert it into a high-quality electronic signal.
More With Less
Incorporating Soundskrit microphones into consumer devices will help OEM’s cut power in half – just two SKR0400 provide the same prowess as four omnidirectional microphone arrays. Add to that a lighter DSP chipset, shorter signal path, better performance and an easier product design to work with, and OEM’s can save on costs while addressing design constraints and time to market. All within the microphone size standards established by the industry.
Soundskrit also developed in-house AI – based on a deep understanding of acoustics around directional microphones and the latest advancements in neural networks – to unlock the full potential of the SKR0400 and bring a pallet of new features to end users. It eliminates background noise and reverb, tracks multiple speakers around a room, and/or detects the distance of a sound from the microphones so that everyday devices can now isolate voice and truly eliminate unwanted background noise. The software suite enhances today’s solutions and provides the framework for future improvements.
The future of audio technology
Soundskrit solutions create truly immersive and pristine audio experiences for consumers now and in the future. The development of a new microphone design that guarantees high-performance for any device is just the beginning. This new microphone will help scale quality audio capture for a wide range of current and future consumer electronics devices – including laptops, webcams, smart speakers, TVs, headsets, health devices, wearables, vehicles, and more.
