The Amazon Alexa Voice Service (AVS) makes it possible for developers and manufacturers to integrate Alexa directly into their connected products, without the need for natural language understanding or speech recognition technology specialists on their team. Today, we launch the Amazon Alexa Premium Far-Field Voice Development Kit, a new Amazon-developed reference solution for AVS that makes it easier for OEMs to build Alexa-enabled products with premium far-field performance.

The Amazon Alexa Premium Far-Field Voice Development Kit uses the same microphone array configurations found in the Amazon Echo and Echo Show. Devices built with this kit's far-field technology  can hear users from across the room, even in noisy environments or while playing music at loud volumes. The “far-field in a chip” architecture of this kit provides an easy-to-integrate audio front-end to developers building Alexa into commercial products. The development kit uses Amazon-developed audio algorithms, wake word engine, and client application technology, delivering a high level of compatibility and the rich feature-set of Alexa functionality.

In creating the Amazon Alexa Premium Far-Field Voice Development Kit, the AVS team focused on a core set of product objectives:

• Premium far-field performance: The dev kit gives device manufacturers access to the same audio technology that powers the latest Amazon Echo family of devices, so they can bring high-quality voice experiences to their products.
• Ease of integration: The audio algorithms and wake word engine are incorporated onto a single DSP chip, Intel’s dual DSP with inference engine, which simplifies integration and accelerates development times for manufacturers.
• Adaptable configurations: The dev kit includes both 7-mic circular and 8-mic rectangular array boards, designed for 360-degree and 180-degree use cases. This makes the reference design suitable for tabletop devices that require voice pickup from all around, as well as devices that are placed near a wall, which require voice pickup primarily from one direction.

We’re bringing the Amazon Alexa Premium Far-Field Voice Development Kit to market with limited availability. Check back later for information on how to request a kit. For more information, please visit the product page.

“The Amazon Alexa Premium Far-Field Voice Development Kit is a significant step toward advancing our goal to provide tools and resources that help developers bring products to market that integrate with Alexa. This will ultimately bring customers more choice of where and how to access Alexa,” said Priya Abani, Director, Amazon Alexa.

Getting Started with AVS

Alexa is always getting smarter with new capabilities and services through machine learning. As a developer, your product also gains access to new capabilities with Alexa through API updates, feature launches, and custom skills. Learn how AVS can add rich voice-powered experiences to your connected products on the AVS Developer Portal.

Have questions? We’re here to help. Visit us on the AVS Forum or Alexa GitHub to speak with one of our experts.