Independent Consumer Tests Show Lucent Technologies Digital Answering Machines Have Best Voice Quality.MURRAY HILL Murray Hill may refer to one of the following places:
New technology from Bell Laboratories - copyrighted voice encoding See encode. software and a faster microelectronics chip - is credited with the improved performance. When consumers were asked to rank leading digital answering machines based on the sound quality of recorded messages, the Lucent Technologies Digital Answering Machine 1725 was ranked number one five times as often as the nearest competing product. In tests conducted at an independent lab, the Lucent device received the highest scores for sound quality of both the outgoing recorded announcement and incoming messages - average ratings of "good" or "excellent" from 75 percent of the consumers. On June 17 Lucent Technologies and Philips Electronics announced that they would create a joint venture of the consumer communications units of the two companies by October 1. Philips is the market leader in telephone sales in Europe, and Lucent is number one in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. . The joint venture, to be called Philips Consumer Communications Philips Consumer Communications, L.P. was a $2.5 billion joint venture of Lucent Technologies and Royal Philips Electronics formed on October 7, 1997. Philips owned 60% of the joint venture, with Lucent owning the other 40%. , will have revenues of about US $2.5 billion. As part of a continuing, cooperative relationship, Bell Laboratories designers have shared the new technology with their counterparts at Philips Consumer Communications. It is likely that the joint venture will use this technology in its future digital answering machines. About 70 percent of U.S. homes already have a telephone answering device, but most of those record the messages using magnetic tape. Many consumers are now trading up to the newer digital tapeless devices, the sales of which are growing at a rate of 25 per cent a year. Digital answering machines allow the consumer to listen to messages in any order, and offer advanced features such as selective save and delete. "The copyrighted voice encoding software and the digital signal processing See DSP. Digital Signal Processing - (DSP) Computer manipulation of analog signals (commonly sound or image) which have been converted to digital form (sampled). (DSP (1) (Digital Signal Processor) A special-purpose CPU used for digital signal processing applications (see definition #2 below). It provides ultra-fast instruction sequences, such as shift and add, and multiply and add, which are commonly used in math-intensive ) chip from the Microelectronics Group of Lucent are both proprietary technology," said Bob Ciminera, product management director for Consumer Products. "It's another example of how Bell Labs technology gives us a quality edge in the marketplace." The Lucent digital answering machines that feature the new technology will have a distinguishing label on the box that says, "Rated No. 1 For Sound Quality Among Top Competitors." They include Lucent models 1725 (with four mailboxes), 1715 (with date/time stamp), and the 1815 and 1825, which include a built-in telephone and will be introduced soon. The Digital Answering Machine 1725 has a suggested retail selling price of $80. The model 1715 sells for $60. Both are available in dove gray. Consumers who would like more information about these answering devices can call 800-222-3111, or access the web page at www.lucent.com/consumer The competitive sound quality tests also included four models of answering machines from other manufacturers, which together with the Lucent machine represent about 87 per cent of the U.S. market. The other devices tested were the Casio Model TA120, GE Model 2-9876, Panasonic Model KX-TM80-B, and BellSouth Model 1197. The tests were conducted in May by Wyle Laboratories Wyle Laboratories, Inc. is a privately held provider of specialized engineering, scientific and technical services to the Department of Defense, NASA, and a variety of commercial customers primarily in the aerospace industry. in Huntsville, Alabama Huntsville is the county seat of Madison County, Alabama. Huntsville is the largest city in northern Alabama in a region of a half-million people, with the city proper having 168,132 residents (2006 estimate). . Lucent Technologies is the U.S. market leader in standalone stand·a·lone adj. Self-contained and usually independently operating: a standalone computer terminal. telephone answering devices and in integrated telephone answering devices, with a market share of more than 30 percent. Lucent Technologies designs, builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems In telecommunication, a communications system is a collection of individual communications networks, transmission systems, relay stations, tributary stations, and data terminal equipment (DTE) usually capable of interconnection and interoperation to form an integrated whole. and software, consumer and business telephone systems and microelectronic components. Bell Laboratories is the research and development arm for the company. New Software Algorithm And Special Purpose Chip Are Keys To High Performance "This new generation of answering machines sets a world standard in voice quality," said Bill Wagoner, chief technical officer of Lucent's Consumer Products unit. "The 'killer technology' is a new software algorithm that we lifted out of the Bell Labs research area and adapted specifically for this use." The Bell Labs software language is so efficient it can translate voice signals from analog to digital using only 6.3 kilobits for each second of speech, versus the 16 kilobits normally required. Lucent has copyrighted this technology, which is a unique software algorithm called RCELP RCELP Relaxation Code-Excited Linear Prediction RCELP Residual Code Excited Linear Prediction (also seen as R-CELP) RCELP Residual Code Excited Linear Predictive , for Relaxation Codebook codebook - data dictionary Excited Linear Prediction Linear prediction is a mathematical operation where future values of a discrete-time signal are estimated as a linear function of previous samples. In digital signal processing, linear prediction is often called linear predictive coding (LPC) and can thus be viewed as a encoding. The operating software is coupled to the "brain" of the answering system, a special purpose DSP chip from Lucent's Microelectronics Group that operates at 40 million operations per second. The chip handles many more functions than conventional chips in answering machines. While translating the voice signals to digital code, it also controls 40 answering machine functions, such as ring detection, time/date stamp display, call data display, and speaker amplification amplification /am·pli·fi·ca·tion/ (33000) (am?pli-fi-ka´shun) the process of making larger, such as the increase of an auditory stimulus, as a means of improving its perception. . The chip also provides Automatic Gain Control (AGC AGC Automatic Gain Control AGC Automotive Glass Cartridge (fuse) AGC Associated General Contractors AGC Associated General Contractors of America AGC Atypical Glandular Cells AGC Attorney-General's Chambers ) on both the outgoing announcement recording and the incoming messages, providing even recording levels for both loud and soft voices. The 1725 answering machine contains eight megabits of flash memory storage, which preserves messages even in the event of a power failure. Total recording time is 24 minutes for the 1725 machine and 12 minutes for the 1715 device. Additional Information The Lucent Technologies Digital Answering System 1725 has the following valuable features: -- Message Guard(TM) Memory - Will not lose messages or outgoing announcements in the event of a power failure. -- Priority Call Signal - Allows you to give important callers a code that makes your system beep distinctively. -- Move Messages - Allows you to move a message from one mailbox A simulated mailbox in the computer that holds e-mail messages. Mailboxes are stored on disk as a file of messages, a database of messages or as an individual file for each message. The standard mailboxes are usually In, Out, Trash and Junk (Spam). to another. -- Digital Recording Capacity - Provides up to 24 minutes of total recording time. -- Three Outgoing Announcements - Lets you record up to three outgoing announcements. -- Scan - Lets you replay any part of a message you want to hear. -- Time/Date Stamp - Announces the time and day of each message before playback. -- Message Preview - Allows you to listen to just the first five seconds of each message. Note to Editors: For color or B & W photos of the new phone, call Jean Sasvari, 201-581-4512. Note to Television Stations: For B-roll (Beta SP) of the new phone, call Jean Sasvari, 201-581-4512. Key Word Search: Answering Systems, Digital, Sound Quality CONTACT: David Bikle 201-581-3938 (Office) 201-871-0104 (Home) E-mail: dbikle@lucent.com |
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