Microsoft is adding a new sound mixer for more granular audio controls in and a new toggle for providing voice prints to improve audio commands in the May Xbox One Update.
Microsoft announced the new sound mixer settings along with a new button for helping the company improve the Xbox One’s speech recognition late yesterday.
This new sound mixer will allow users to control exactly how loud certain apps are when launched alongside others. The idea is that Microsoft is giving Xbox One owners the tools they need to prevent things like having the audio from a game dominate voices coming from a snapped Xbox One Party app without mandating a universal setting. Before this update there wasn’t anyway to configure which apps running had audio priority.
The new speech recognition program that users can opt into is all about improving how well the Xbox One interprets audio commands. Microsoft needs a larger and larger pool of voices to analyze if it hopes to make the Xbox One’s Kinect voice functionality that much more reliable. It’ll be interesting to see how many users who’ve complained about the Xbox One not interpreting their commands correctly will be willing to let Microsoft analyze their speech patterns.
The May Xbox One Update is rolling out to Xbox One users who joined the Xbox One preview program right now. Presumably, it’ll begin going out to all consoles late in May.