Project Denmark: graphic of a virtual microphone array

Project Denmark

Established: January 8, 2019

The goal of Project Denmark is to move beyond the need for traditional microphone arrays, such as those supported by Microsoft’s Speech Devices SDK, to achieve high-quality capture of meeting conversations. Instead, virtual microphone arrays are dynamically created from consumer-grade devices, such as mobile phones or laptops equipped with ordinary microphones.  Algorithms for combining speech information at multiple levels yield transcription accuracy that approaches that from close-talking microphones, with many potential applications. For example, we may pair multiple Microsoft Translator applications to help meeting participants communicate more effectively across language barriers. Furthermore, meeting understanding technology may be enabled by the speaker-attributed transcripts resulting from Project Denmark, without specially designed hardware.

Watch the demonstration of the speech translation and transcription service prototype at Microsoft Build 2019.

Graphic showing different microphone arrays

Learn about recent advancements in spoken language processing. Read the blog >