Andrea Electronics Profile
Andrea Electronics Corporation (Andrea) designs, develops, and manufactures digital microphone products and noise reduction software that facilitate natural language processing, human/machine interfaces. The company's technologies eliminate unwanted background noise to enable the optimum performance of various speech-based and audio applications.
Andrea's products and technologies optimize the performance of speech-based applications and audio applications primarily in the following markets: speech recognition applications; communications; and audio and video recording.
Andrea Digital Signal Processing ('DSP') Microphone and Audio Software Business - The company's patented digital noise canceling technologies enable a speaker to be at a distance from the microphone (the company refers to this capability as 'far-field' microphone use) and free the speaker from having to use a close talking microphone. The company's Digital Super Directional Array ('DSDA') and PureAudio microphone products convert sound received by an array of microphones into digital signals that are then processed to cancel background noise from the signal to be transmitted. These two adaptive technologies represent the core technologies within the company's portfolio of far-field technologies. In addition to DSDA and PureAudio, Andrea has developed and commercialized several other digital, far-field noise canceling technologies, including among others, Andrea EchoStop, a high-quality full duplex acoustic echo canceller which enables speakerphone functionality with technology for canceling speaker feedback.
All of the company's digital, far-field microphone technologies are software-based and operate using either a dedicated DSP or a general purpose processor (for example, the Intel Pentium). The software, which may encompass one or all of the company's far-field noise canceling technologies, can be applied to improve the performance of a single microphone or multiple microphones. In addition, the company's digital, far-field, noise canceling technologies can be tailored to be used individually or combined depending on particular customer requirements.
The company is marketing its far-field technologies at original equipment manufacturers ('OEMs') that have new sophisticated artificial intelligence ('AI') voice applications that require new digital microphone performance for enhancing the safe use and efficiency of devices. The company's far-field, digital noise canceling technologies and related products comprise the company's Andrea DSP Microphone and Audio Software line of business.
Patent Monetization, Intellectual Property and Licensing - The company's products and technologies are developed in part using its proprietary intellectual property, and the strength of the company's intellectual property rights will be important to the success of the company's business. The company utilizes patent and trade secret protection, confidentiality agreements with customers and partners, disclosure and invention assignment agreements with employees and consultants and other contractual provisions to protect the company's intellectual property and other proprietary information. The company plans to license specific, custom designs to its customers, charging royalties at a fixed amount per product or a percentage of sales. More generally, the company intends to vigorously defend and monetize the company's intellectual property through licensing arrangements and, where necessary, enforcement actions against those entities using the company's patented solutions in their products. Royalties resulting from these patent monetization efforts can be structured in a variety of ways, including but not limited to, one-time paid up licenses or ongoing royalty arrangements. The company expects to generate a portion of its revenues with these types of licensing arrangements.
The company is designing and marketing its products and technologies so they can be used for 'natural language, human/machine' interfaces, including Amazon Alexa, Google Now, IBM Watson, and Microsoft Cortana.
Strategy
The company's strategies are to maintain and advance its market position with the company's Andrea DSP Microphone and Audio Software technologies and products; broaden the company's Andrea DSP Microphone and Audio Software product lines through a healthy level of internal research and development; design the company's products to satisfy specific end-user requirements identified by the company's collaborative partners; develop relationships with companies that have significant distribution capabilities for the company's Andrea DSP Microphone and Audio Software technologies and products; outsource manufacturing of the company's products in order to reduce fixed overhead and achieve economies of scale; and vigorously defend and monetize the company's intellectual property through licensing arrangements and, where necessary, enforcement actions against those entities using the company's patented solutions in their products.
An important element of the company's strategy for expanding its industrial and commercial channels and broadening the base of users for the company's products is increasing its own direct business to business marketing efforts to original equipment manufacturers for incorporation into, or for use with, their products.
Technologies
The company designs its Andrea DSP Microphone and Audio Software to transmit voice signals with the high level of quality, intelligibility and reliability required by the broad range of voice-based applications in cloud computing. The company achieves this through the use of several audio technologies that employ software processes that are proprietary to the company. Software processes of this type are commonly referred to as algorithms.
Andrea DSP Microphone and Audio Software Technology
This set of technologies is generally based on the use of an array of microphones from which the analog signals are converted to digital form and then processed using digital electronic circuitry and software to eliminate unwanted noise in the speaker's environment. The company's Andrea DSP Microphone and Audio Software Products provide clear acoustic and audio input performance where the desired audio signal is at a distance from the microphone. The company's technology is portable and can be embedded into new platforms such as micro DSP's, mobile OS and wireless chipsets. The company's Andrea DSP Microphone and Audio Software technology achieve far-field microphone performance previously unattainable through microphones based on mechanical acoustic designs and microphones based on analog signal processing.
The company's Andrea DSP Microphone and Audio Software Products include the use of the following technologies, among other technologies and techniques:
Digital Super Directional Array ('DSDA'): Andrea's patented DSDA adaptive beam forming system enables more intelligible audio by forming a beam toward the speaker and eliminating background noises that are outside of the beam. DSDA microphone technology enables high quality far-field communications by centering microphone sensitivity on a user's voice and canceling noise outside of that signal. DSDA continuously samples the ever changing acoustic parameters within an environment and adaptively identifies interfering noises that are extraneous to the voice signal, resulting in increased intelligibility of the array microphone's output.
PureAudio: Andrea's patented PureAudio and award winning noise reduction speech enhancement algorithm significantly improves intelligibility of voice audio and accuracy in speech driven applications used in noisy environments. PureAudio is a noise canceling algorithm that enhances speech by sampling the ambient noise in an environment and attenuating the noise from sources near or around the desired speech signals, thus delivering a clear audio signal. Designed specifically to improve the signal-to-noise ratio, PureAudio is effective in canceling stationary noises, such as computer and ventilation fans, tires and engines.
EchoStop: Andrea's patented full duplex acoustic echo cancellation algorithm enables both loudspeakers to broadcast and microphones to transmit simultaneously providing a high quality speakerphone function. EchoStop is an advanced acoustic echo canceller (stereo version available) developed for use with conferencing systems such as group audio and videoconferencing systems and cellular car phone kits. EchoStop allows true two-way communication (often referred to as full duplex) over a conferencing system, even when the system is used in large spatial environments that may be vulnerable to extensive reverberation. EchoStop incorporates noise reduction to reduce the background noise of both the microphone input and the loudspeaker output, thus preventing the accumulation of interfering noise over conferencing systems that facilitate communication among multiple sites.
Direction Finding and Tracking Array ('DFTA'): Andrea's patented DFTA technology utilizes an array of microphones and a unique algorithm to detect the presence of a user's voice, determine the direction of the voice and follow and track it when it moves. In a videoconferencing setting, this unique technology can provide direction to a videoconferencing camera and allow the system to steer and concentrate on the speaker, thus providing a 'video-follow-audio' capability.
Products and their Markets and Applications
The company's Andrea DSP Microphone and Audio Software Products have been designed for applications that are controlled by or depend on speech across a broad range of hardware and software platforms. These products incorporate the company's DSP microphone technologies and are designed to cancel background noise in a range of noisy environments, such as homes, offices, factories and automobiles. The company also manufactures a line of accessories for these products. For commercial markets, the company has designed its Andrea DSP Microphone and Audio Software Products for the following applications: mass transit and automotive communication systems; automated teller machines; information kiosks; quick service restaurant automated ordering; Internet of Things ('IoT'); smart building entrance intercom systems; audio and video recording; and video surveillance.
Andrea DSP Microphone and Audio Noise Reduction Software Products
The company develops its Andrea DSP Microphone and Audio Noise Reduction Software Products primarily through customer-specific integration efforts, and the company either licenses its related algorithms, sell a product incorporating the company's related algorithms, or both. In addition, the company has developed stand-alone products for specific industrial and commercial OEM customers. As a result, such products are not generally sold to consumers. Therefore, as part of the company's strategy to increase sales to prospective customers desiring high-quality microphone performance for certain customer-specific environments, the company has developed the following products:
DA-350 Auto Array Microphone ('DA-350'). The DA-350 is a linear four element array microphone with Digital Signal Processing ('DSP') circuitry contained within a single microphone housing. The product also has integrated adaptive beam forming and noise reduction digital filtering software. The DA-350 is ideal for achieving superior far-field voice intelligibility and accuracy of Automatic Speech Recognition ('ASR') in automotive and mass transit environments.
DA-250 OEM Array Microphone ('DA-250'). The DA-250 is a small compact Stereo Array Microphone and DSP circuit board platform that can easily be integrated into many different OEM devices that would greatly benefit from directional noise canceling microphone performance, but in the past has been unattainable with an embedded microphone configuration. Requiring only two tiny holes in the faceplate of a device, the DA-250 Stereo Array Microphone can deliver directional microphone sensitivity without the need for acoustic baffling, as found in shotgun tube type microphones. This product also includes full duplex echo cancellation for speakerphone functionality.
USB-SA Array Microphone. The USB-SA Array Microphone provides a USB digital audio adapter to bypass a computer's standard integrated sound system, providing a high fidelity/low noise digital audio platform that is isolated from the computer's motherboard. This external digital audio system utilizes the computer's central processor to run Andrea's AudioCommander adaptive beam forming directional microphone and noise reduction software.
Andrea AudioCommander. Andrea's PC Audio Control Panel, AudioCommander, includes a speaker volume adjustment with received PureAudio noise reduction control and a 10-band graphic equalizer with 18 built-in presets to customize sound for a user's listening preference. It also includes a microphone volume adjustment with noise reduction, beam forming, and acoustic echo cancellation controls. The software also includes an audio wizard that sets microphone levels to optimize PC audio for speech-enabled applications, including speech recognition, internet telephony and command and speech control functions.
Andrea Audio Software for Mac. Andrea Audio Software for Mac provides an intuitive graphic user interface to control stereo array microphone beam forming, noise cancellation on the input and EQ filters for the output of Andrea's USB-SA audio devices running on the Apple Mac OS.
Andrea PureAudio Live Recorder. PureAudio Live Recorder is a full function digital voice and audio recording application for use with Apple iOS devices. The PureAudio Live Recorder is enhanced with Andrea's patented digital noise reduction microphone technology. PureAudio digitally reduces background noise, while enhancing the recorded sound quality and intelligibility when making recordings in real-world noisy mobile environments.
Andrea PureAudio Plus Recorder. In addition to the features offered in PureAudio Live Recorder, PureAudio Plus Recorder offers unlimited bookmarks for easy navigation of large recordings, 10-band graphic equalizer to customize your listening experience, aggressive PureAudio for recording in noisy environments, stereo recording for capturing surround sound recordings and beam forming noise cancellation to reduce sounds coming from the sides. PureAudio Plus Recorder is an easy to use, intuitive stereo recorder for capturing music and offers background noise reduction for crystal clear recordings of voice notes, lectures and interviews with almost unlimited recording time.
Collaborative Arrangements
An important element of the company's strategy is to promote widespread adoption of the company's products and technologies by collaborating with large enterprises and market and technology leaders in security systems and services, industrial system integrators, voice activated services, communications and computer manufacturing.
Patents, Trademarks, and Other Intellectual Property Rights
Andrea maintains a number of patents in the United States covering claims to certain of its products and technology, which expire at various dates up to 2029.
Research and Development
For the year ended December 31, 2022, the company's total research and development expenses were $460,318.
Sales and Marketing
The company employs a sales staff, as well as outside sales representatives to market the company's Andrea DSP Microphone and Audio Software Products. Andrea DSP Microphone and Audio Software Products are marketed to computer and kiosk OEMs and industrial system integrators. Under the company's existing collaborative agreements, the company's collaborators have various marketing and sales rights to the company's Andrea DSP Microphone and Audio Software. The company is seeking to enter into additional collaborative arrangements for the marketing and sale of the company's Andrea DSP Microphone and Audio Software Products, but the company cannot assure you that the company will be successful in these efforts.
Production Operations
In 2022, all of the company's assembly operations were performed with subcontractors in the United States or in Asia.
History
Andrea Electronics Corporation was founded in 1934. The company was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934.
