Industry-leading audio front-end ensures flawless speech recognition regardless of external noise for an optimal user experience

SANTA CLARA, Calif., January 19, 2021 – DSP Concepts, the audio platform that powers many of the world’s leading consumer and automotive brands on over 50 million devices, today announced a partnership with Kakao Enterprise to bring a voice user interface to its latest smart speaker, the Mini Hexa (KE-H200). Mini Hexa is the company’s fourth smart device to feature DSP Concepts’ TalkTo, a highly adaptive audio front-end that removes unreferenced sounds for far-field voice control in noisy and unpredictable environments. TalkTo not only improves voice recognition accuracy, but also supports faster and more stable connections across Mini Hexa’s six-microphone system and is fully compatible with Kakao Enterprise’s Kakao i Voice Engine.

"When we started designing Mini Hexa, we knew we needed an audio front-end that could more effectively detect user commands, even when the TV is on or the kids are playing, and could support a six-microphone array in such a compact device," said the Kakao Enterprise developers. "TalkTo met both of those requirements, with the added benefit of automatically optimizing for smart speaker applications, saving us significant time and engineering bandwidth. We're very happy with the end result and are confident that it will achieve high sales volumes well into the holiday season and beyond."

Mini Hexa has a hexagonal exterior design, and its compact size and design compared to Kakao Mini and Kakao Mini C makes it easy to install anywhere in your home. TalkTo features six high-performance microphones with both voice recognition beamforming and echo cancellation to maximize overall voice control performance. TalkTo is also the only commercially scalable solution for multi-channel AEC, and the best on the market to cancel up to 30dB of non-reference noise.

"Our collaboration with Kakao Enterprise reinforces the value of TalkTo, both in terms of design flexibility and product performance," said Paul Beckmann, CTO and co-founder of DSP Concepts. "The pandemic has not only accelerated demand for voice technology, but also raised performance expectations. Today's consumers expect their smart speakers to hear them from multiple rooms in their home, making TalkTo's far-field voice detection extremely valuable for OEMs."

In addition to the new compact design and improved microphone system, Mini Hexa also improves its ability to seamlessly connect with other devices, with separate Wi-Fi and Bluetooth antennas improving both network speed and stability.

Mini Hexa is available to purchase in stores and at https://kakao.ai/product/minihexa.
For more information about DSP Concepts and TalkTo, please visit https://www.macnica.co.jp/business/semiconductor/manufacturers/dsp_concepts.

Related article

• Manufacturer's original press release: KAKAO ENTERPRISE PARTNERS WITH DSP CONCEPTS TO RAISE THE BAR FOR VOICE PERFORMANCE IN ITS MINI HEXA SMART SPEAKER
• Audio development platform "Audio Weaver"
• Audio IP (Click here to learn more about TalkTo)

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