Comments on: Microsoft Details Vista’s New Mic Array Features

By: Sachin

Sachin — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:42:22 +0000

Can somebody point me to currently available external and internal microphone arrays which will work with windows (vista preferred) and are fully programmable through vista microphone array APIs?

By: music » Blog Archive » Microsoft Details Vista’s New Mic Array Features

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 02:45:25 +0000

[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]

By: Music News » Blog Archive » Microsoft Details Vista’s New Mic Array Features

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 10:43:35 +0000

[...] Check it out here [...]

By: Kyran

Kyran — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 09:41:39 +0000

You could use antenna array/smart antenna system technology for those microphone arrays (including tracking). But those algorithms are pretty calculation intensive (especially the direction of arrival estimations) even for smallband antenna systems. The audio channel is actually extremely broadbanded, which complicates things a bit more.

But the thing is that you could make extremely directional microphones using these arrays, reducing the amount of unwanted noise (not coming from the main direction) and reposition the main beam electrically (without moving the array), by changing the way you add up the different signals. So if done right this has some potential for high fidelity recordings.

By: poopoo

poopoo — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 03:16:21 +0000

…when I say speaker I mean the person.

By: poopoo

poopoo — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 01:47:40 +0000

There are some great papers from hearing aid researchers about creating all sorts of different polar patterns using mic arrays. The catch seems to be the heavy EQ’ing required to get a flat frequency response. Since you have to cut so much in the EQ then boost to compensate, you need to have very good S/N ratio’s in the mic elements.

I don’t think this will be in Windows though. With the beam former, I’m thinking cameras that automatically follow a speaker around a room will be one gee whiz application that will appear.

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 17:08:08 +0000

Joshua, that’s very interesting. I wonder if this built-in processing would work for that, though?

By: joshua

joshua — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 17:06:40 +0000

re: pro applications

the lab i work in has a spherical microphone array that can form virtual microphones up to 3rd order hypercardioid patterns in any direction. we use it for telecommunications research, but i think (price permitting) these things could drastically change the recording industry. imagine micing a band with one spherical array and having software find the instruments for you and determine the best mic configuration, or just stick one of these in a room and get incredibly realistic surround sound recordings (people do this already with lower order mics - i.e. ambisonics and the soundfield microphone).

By: Kyran

Kyran — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 16:33:10 +0000

The number of firewire and usb audio/midi devices isn’t the right statistic ofcourse. It’s the number sold (and therefore used) that is of interest to microsoft.

The good thing is that they now seem to try to incorporate the stuff of tomorrow. The reason why companies like logitech need to put in cancellation in their drivers is that microsoft didn’t do it, because there was no need at the time. They need to know what to put in 3 years before release, and make sure that the product is up to date until 4 years after the release. A lot of new technologies emerge in that time. Hence the need for some OS functionality to be incorporated in the device drivers.

This shows that ms is at least looking at what’s next for consumers. It’s a good evolution.