High Def Microphone for Mobile Computing

morpheus83 writes "Akustica today introduced the first High Definition Microphone that enables HD voice quality in laptop PCs and other broadband mobile devices. The AKU2103 is a digital-output microphone with a guaranteed wideband frequency response. It is the first digital microphone to guarantee compliance with the TIA-920 audio performance requirement for wideband transmission in applications such as Voiceover-Internet Protocol (VoIP)."

Comments

What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

> High Definition Microphone?

What is this supposed to mean?

> that enables HD voice quality in laptop PCs and other broadband mobile devices.

Meaningless, I use mics from cheap Chinese dynamics to rare vintage U47's. The acoustic environment and relative position of mic to sound source has more effect on the sound than the design.

> a digital-output microphone

It may have a digital output but it is not a digital output microphone! No more than there is any such a thing as digital headphones.

Re:High Def Audio?

[Daniel Rutter]

The term High Def should not be applied to audio.

It does mean something, but it doesn't seem to mean much. Instead of the 3kHz-ish bandwidth of your normal voice phone link, this standard provides 150Hz to 6.8kHz audio bandwidth.

That, of course, is very well within the abilities of all kinds of crappy five-dollar microphones. This gadget is an integrated device with mic module, A/D converter and other jazz, but there doesn't seem to be anything else special about it.

There's nothing stopping software VOIP systems from providing DC-to-daylight audio bandwidth if you've got the link bandwidth to support it. I would be very surprised if you couldn't get a zero-dollar VOIP connection today that sounds better than this new "improved" standard, if you use even half-decent mics at either end.

Re:Buzzword bingo

[Giloo]

If it was only about buzzwords... I had to watch carefully through the ads to see the no-content on this device... Why not link http://www.akustica.com/products/digitalmic.asp instead ?

Re:High Def Audio?

[iluvcapra]

Hello, I am a Sound Designer for motion pictures.

In my context, "high-definition" is mostly a marketing term, so that people who procure our gear and only know about video are enticed to buy "high-definition" audio equipment as well. OTOH, we usually apply the term "high-definition" to audio recordings that exceed 48 kHz sampling rate or 24 bit sample size. Many sound effects (and much film music nowadays) is originated at 96 kHz or 192 kHz so that we have more bandwidth to play with when we do pitch shifting, and in anticipation of the 96 kHz presentation formats (if and when they are ever introduced.) We don't do any audio professionally at 32 bit, unfortunately, but wider sample sizes allow much more dynamic work with recordings (basically, it can make mixes louder, and quiet mixes sound better).