Excerpt:
"While the idea sounds simple, it requires overcoming many technical challenges to be effective. The audio quality of devices varies significantly. The speech signals captured by different microphones are not aligned with each other. The number of devices and their relative positions are unknown. For these reasons and others, consolidating the information streams from multiple independent devices in a coherent way is much more complicated than it may seem. In fact, although the concept of ad hoc microphone arrays dates back to the beginning of this century, to our knowledge it has not been realized as a product or public prototype so far."
Thoughts:
There's something deep here, not with respect to microphones and speech transcription (although I wish Microsoft and whoever else attempts to wrestle with those problems the greatest of success!)
There's a related deep problem in physics here.
If we consider signals that emanate from outer space, let's say they're from the big bang, or heck, let's just say they're from one of our past-the-edge-of-this-solar-system satelites -- that wants to communicate back to earth.
Well, due to the incredible distances involved, the signal will get garbled in various ways...
So here's the $64,000 question:
When that signal from deep space gets garbled, isn't it possible that it turns into various other signals, at various different other frequencies and wavelengths?
In other words, space itself, over long distances, acts as a prism (not really, but as an easy way to wrap your mind around this concept), for radio, and other electromagnetic waves...
Now, if you want to reconstruct the orignal message at these long distances, you must be able to reconstruct garbled radio (and other em) waves, which are moving at different frequencies, and may even arrive at the destination at different rates of speed with various time shifts...
Basically, you've got to take those pieces -- move them to the correct frequency, time correct them, speed them up or slow them down, sync them, and overlay them -- to reconstruct the original message...
That's the greater question in physics -- the ability to do all of that, with em signals from a long way off in space...
The article referenced -- is the microphone/audio/slow speed equivalent -- of that larger problem...