Two of Lenovo’s upcoming laptops are the first to feature Dolby Voice, a sound technology aimed at making it easier for people to hear during conference calls. The feature combines elements such as background noise suppression and dynamic leveling to make meetings “clearer, more natural and less tiring,” says Dolby. Lenovo’s upcoming ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 and X1 Yoga Gen 6 laptops will both include the technology, but Dolby would not say which other laptops it would come in the future.
Dolby Voice is not exactly a brand new piece of technology. Dolby previously used similar underlying technology for its Dolby Conference Phone and Dolby Voice Room, both of which were business-oriented conference solutions. The difference is that it will now be available directly in some laptops without the need for separate Dolby hardware.
The technology includes a number of different features that work with your speakers and microphones to make call sound easier. “Full camera recording and dynamic leveling” adjusts the sound of a call to make it easier to hear people who are quieter or further away from the microphone. Voice also includes noise reduction to eliminate echo and background noise. Finally, Dolby Voice says speech makes it easier to hear when there is more than one person in the same call, thanks to a “voice separation feature”.
The technology works on incoming and outgoing audio, so you need to sound clearer to the people you are talking to, and you will also hear an advantage. The features of Dolby Voice can be controlled via the Dolby Access app.
Your combination of hardware and software will determine which of these features can be used. Dolby says adding full room, dynamic leveling and noise reduction all work out of the box with the two laptops, no matter what software is used. External 3.5mm microphones connected to a laptop can also benefit from noise suppression and dynamic leveling. However, the requirements for the voice separation function are a bit higher and the function will only work if you use the built-in microphones of the laptop with certain services including Zoom.
Since many people have stayed at home over the past year, there is a great deal of interest in using software to improve the quality of sound during calls. Some chat services like Discord and Google Meet have built-in noise reduction technology directly into their services, while Nvidia’s Broadcast software works in different chat programs, as long as you have the right hardware (Nvidia).
Dolby Voice can combine the best parts of the two approaches. Its features are not necessarily limited to one chat service, nor a graphics card that may be needed with ray tracing. We need to know how well it performs when Lenovo launches two compatible laptops in February.