Insta360 and Tencent Ethereal Audio Lab combined hardware and audio expertise to help people hear and be heard on the Insta360 Wave.
A leaf blower interrupts a work call. Keyboard taps compete with a colleague’s voice. An interview guest begins speaking too softly to hear.
Calls and recordings rarely happen in perfect conditions. Keeping speech clear takes more than a sensitive microphone: the device needs to reduce unwanted sound without losing the voice people want to hear.
That challenge brought Insta360, a popular maker of 360-degree video cameras, and Tencent Ethereal Audio Lab together to develop a pristine audio experience for the Insta360 Wave.
A compact device, a complex challenge
Insta360 Wave is an AI-powered omnidirectional microphone that integrates microphone, speaker, and recording functions. Its purpose is simple: help people hear and be heard.
Delivering that in a compact device requires close coordination between hardware and software. Microphone placement, sound from the speaker, the distance between participants and the acoustics of the room all affect what listeners hear.
Insta360 brought the product design, hardware and microphone expertise, as well as a strong sense of how Wave should work. Tencent Ethereal Audio Lab contributed its 3A audio capabilities and experience in audio algorithms, the software that processes sound as it’s captured.
What 3A does
“3A” covers three technologies that address familiar frustrations: hearing an echo, struggling to follow someone over background noise, or repeatedly adjusting the volume.
- Acoustic echo cancellation reduces sound from the device’s own speaker that its microphones pick up again. This helps prevent people on the other end of a call from hearing their own voices played back to them.
- Automatic noise suppression reduces unwanted background sound while preserving speech. The balance matters: push noise reduction too far, and a voice can sound thin or unnatural.
- Automatic gain control adjusts audio levels to keep speech at a more consistent volume, helping balance quieter and louder voices.
Making the technology work together
The three functions cannot be tuned in isolation. A change to one can affect the others, while small hardware details can alter how the algorithms perform.
The teams tested Wave in controlled acoustic scenarios, adjusted the algorithms and listened closely to the results. A setting that worked well in one situation might need refining in another. Each round of testing helped them balance noise reduction, reverberation control and voice quality.
Rather than simply removing more sound, the result is keeping the human voice clear, balanced and natural, so listeners hear the person, not the room.
That work shows how collaboration allows each partner to build on its strengths and benefit from the other’s expertise. By solving challenges together, technology companies can strengthen their own capabilities while creating better products and experiences for the people who use them.
