Speak up, I can't hear you —

Apple quietly breaking up with Audience for Siri’s noise filtering tech

Could it mean that Siri is ready to exit beta status and spread to more phones?

Apple quietly breaking up with Audience for Siri's noise filtering tech

Apple may be using its own technology to boost Siri's noise filtering capabilities with the next version of the iPhone. Digital signal processing company Audience announced late Thursday that Apple was "unlikely" to use its noise suppression IP in its upcoming iPhone, though Audience's tech may remain in the chips produced for older versions of the iPhone.

It came out that Apple was working with Audience for Siri's signal processing capabilities in the iPhone 4S in February of this year thanks to an SEC filing. At the time, Audience revealed that a version of the company's background noise filtering tech—called earSmart—was incorporated directly into the A5 processor Apple currently uses in the iPhone 4S. It is believed that this is part of the reason Apple currently limits its virtual "intelligent assistant" to the iPhone 4S, though Apple has announced plans to bring Siri to the third-generation iPad when iOS 6 is released this fall.

"Audience now believes that it is unlikely that [Apple] will enable Audience's processor IP in its next generation mobile phone," Audience said in a statement. "Audience is not aware of any intended changes by this OEM to its use of Audience's processors or processor IP in prior generations of the OEM's mobile phones."

Apple came under fire when it decided to limit Siri to the iPhone 4S, because hacks had enabled users of jailbroken iPhone 4 hadsets to install Siri, indicating that it could indeed run on older tech than the iPhone 4S. The February announcement by Audience seemed to indicate, however, that Apple was limiting Siri to certain hardware for quality assurance purposes—at least until Siri was ready to drop its "beta" status. Now that Apple appears to be shedding its dependence on Audience, it could be an indicator that Siri is ready to make its way onto more devices without the help of earSmart. We'll likely find out more next Wednesday when Apple holds its fall media event in San Francisco.

Channel Ars Technica