Audience (company)
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | Mobile voice and audio processing technologies |
| Fate | Acquired by Knowles Corporation in Q3 2015, renamed Knowles Intelligent Audio |
| Headquarters | Mountain View, California , United States |
Area served | Global |
| Products | earSmart processors (Advanced Voice and Smart Sound families) |
| Parent | Knowles Corporation |
Audience was a U.S.-based company located in Mountain View, California that focused on mobile voice and audio processing technologies. As a founding participant in the Open Handset Alliance, it launched its initial public offering on NASDAQ in May 2012 under the ticker ADNC. The firm specialized in improving voice clarity and minimizing noise interference for consumer electronics including cellular phones, mobile devices, and PCs. In the third quarter of 2015, Knowles Corporation acquired Audience for $130 million, subsequently renaming it Knowles Intelligent Audio.
Audience developed groundbreaking technology by reverse-engineering the human auditory system to replicate its functions on integrated circuits, enabling devices to emulate human "auditory intelligence." This approach utilized multiple microphones to suppress ambient noise, enhancing voice clarity and reducing distractions for listeners, effectively recreating the "cocktail party effect."
In 2010, Audience collaborated with HTC to embed its noise cancellation technology into the Google Nexus One smartphone. By 2011, AT&T offered eight handsets equipped with Audience's earSmart technology, including models such as the Samsung Galaxy S III Skyrocket and HTC Vivid.
In 2013, the company unveiled a combined voice processor and audio codec, strengthening its leadership in mobile audio processing solutions.
Background
Audience’s technology has been incorporated into more than 140 device models, including the Nexus One, various models of the Samsung Galaxy S series and Galaxy Note line, as well as Apple’s iPhone 4 and 4S, and LG’s G2. The company maintained partnerships with manufacturers like Huawei, Google, HTC, Sharp, Pantech, and ZTE. In 2010, Audience worked closely with AT&T to integrate its advanced voice processing features into AT&T-branded devices and continued collaborations with numerous international carriers. Its inaugural PC implementation was featured in the Dell Vostro 5460.
Products
Under the "earSmart" brand, Audience marketed two main processor families: Advanced Voice and Smart Sound. The Advanced Voice lineup included processors such as the eS110 (designed for single-microphone setups), eS305 and eS310 (supporting two microphones), and the newest eS325 (capable of handling three microphones), which was announced during Mobile World Congress 2013.
The Smart Sound processors merged Advanced Voice capabilities—including high-definition call quality, wideband noise suppression, bandwidth expansion, acoustic echo cancellation, and enhanced Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)—with an integrated stereo audio codec. Launched at Consumer Electronics Show 2013, the eS515 featured three-microphone noise reduction alongside improved ASR performance. Later that year, Audience introduced a comparable product known as the eS325.
Technology
Audience’s solutions are grounded in Computational Auditory Scene Analysis (CASA), an evolution of Auditory Scene Analysis (ASA), a theory developed by psychologist Albert Bregman. ASA allows humans to distinguish and segregate sounds—such as speech—from complex auditory backgrounds.
CASA extends this capability to machines by enabling sound source separation. Audience’s earSmart processors emulate the human cochlea by clustering sounds based on attributes like pitch, timing, spatial cues, and harmonic structure. Utilizing proprietary "Fast Cochlea Transform" technology, these processors analyze concurrent audio streams captured via multiple microphones on mobile devices to isolate speech signals while suppressing background noise effectively.