Google has introduced Lyra, a new technology that allows Duo and soon other applications to offer a natural audio conversation with just under 3 kilobytes per second of network bandwidth.
Update: Google has now opened up Lyra for other applications to use.
Since so many of us are not yet able to hang out with loved ones, video calling apps play a key role in keeping us all connected. Google Duo and Meet last year alone offered more than 1 trillion minutes of video. However, it has also put a lot of pressure on internet infrastructure around the world, and most video calling methods exclude anyone with a low-grade internet connection.
To help with this, Google has developed a new audio codec called Lyra, which is specifically optimized to provide recognizable, intelligible and naturally sounding human languages in as little space as possible. As explained on the Google AI Blog, this was done using a machine learning model, which was trained in ‘thousands of hours of audio with speakers in more than 70 languages’ to ensure that Lyra could be used by as many people as possible. More importantly, Lyra is efficient enough to work on anything from a high-end cloud server to a mid-range smartphone with only 90ms delay.
As can be seen – or rather heard – from the video above, Lyra offers sound that, while noticeably lower than a normal recording, is clearly recognizable as the speaker’s voice, while being able to use incredibly little data. There are some examples of speech in Lyra compared to other low bandwidth audio codecs, on the Google AI Blog.
Lyra will soon get its first real use as it now expands to Google Duo for Android, where the codec will be used for calls made with low speed connections, with Google offering especially dial-up connections and rural areas in India and Brazil only a 2G network connection on. From there, Google plans to release Lyra as open source so that other companies can offer low-bandwidth Lyra audio in their own applications.
Update 4/6: Just over a month after it was first announced, Google kept its promise and made Lyra fully open source. For now, this first beta version of the Lyra codec is only optimized for use by Android developers on Linux machines, but it should be enough to give developers something to start working with, and later bring to all their intended platforms .
We are releasing Lyra today as a beta release because we wanted to enable developers and get feedback as soon as possible. As a result, we expect the API and bitstream to change as it evolves. All code for managing Lyra is obtained under the Apache license, except for a math core, for which a shared library is available until we can implement a fully open solution on more platforms. We’re looking forward to seeing what people do with Lyra now that it’s open source. Check out the code and demo on GitHub, let us know what you think and how you want to use it!
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