Topic: The Sad State of Mics Is Holding Back Siri and Alexa

[Life In Rewind]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/the-sad-state-of-microphones-is-holding-back-siri-and-alexa?cmpid=yhoo.headline

The mics in most consumer technology haven’t kept pace with the advances in, say, cameras. They still aren’t great at focusing on faraway voices or filtering out background noise, and they often require too much power to be listening at all times. So the race into voice control by device makers is putting fresh pressure on the handful of obscure companies leading the $1 billion global market for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) microphones. The message: We need better hardware, software, or both.

[voltronic]

There is plenty of existing tech they could use, like beamforming, they just need to install two mics at oppose ends of the phone.

A lot of smart phones already have this, some even have 3.  Not sure about iPhones, but my LG G4 has one mic on each end - the second one is for background noise cancellation.

[Gutbucket]

Here's a webpage of one of many outfits working the IP, software, DSP side of these things- http://www.illusonic.com/licensing/  Recognize the microphone?  It's from a favored manufacturer around here, and uses two capsules plus beamforming tech to increase directionality beyond previously achievable limits while mitigating typical bad off-axis behavior at the same time.  It's every bit about better quality audio (at a price), yet on the order of thousands of units, not millions as in phones. 

A bit more on increasing mic directivity and devreverberation tech- http://www.illusonic.com/dereverberation/