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Intel Smart Sound Technology - SST

Open Massimo-B opened this issue 4 months ago • 4 comments

Hello,

on Intel architecture there is Intel Smart Sound Technology - SST. It is enabled via the Bios option "Dynamic Noise suppression" and offers processing directly on the Intel DSP.

Is there any project implementing that on Linux? The kernel has snd-intel-dspcfg and snd-sof-pci. Then there is https://github.com/thesofproject. Is there any support for Dynamic Noise suppression (DNS), Beamforming etc.?

Currently I'm doing noise cancellation via easyeffects instead of Pipewire's module-echo-cancel, to have more configuration options...

Massimo-B avatar Aug 06 '25 07:08 Massimo-B

Is there any project implementing that on Linux?

I have no idea.

Is there any support for Dynamic Noise suppression (DNS), Beamforming etc.?

As you probably have already noticed we have noise reduction plugins. How they compare to what Intel is doing I do not know.

wwmm avatar Aug 06 '25 19:08 wwmm

Sure, I use them. Using the Intel DSP would just reduce load on the CPU. The beamforming thing with 2 or more microphones might be only possible with their own DSP.

Massimo-B avatar Aug 07 '25 05:08 Massimo-B

Sure, I use them. Using the Intel DSP would just reduce load on the CPU. The beamforming thing with 2 or more microphones might be only possible with their own DSP.

As this seems to be restricted to Intel devices I think that the odds of someone developing an audio plugin based on it are very low. And from EasyEffects point of view having a plugin that depends on specif hardware is not ideal.

And a generic solution that mimics its behavior would have the additional CPU you load you want to avoid.

wwmm avatar Aug 07 '25 14:08 wwmm

I agree. I found only few information about it. It seems odd to require drivers if processing is on DSP anyway. It would make more sense to just let it always do DNS on the mic when enabled, no matter what the operating system is like. But from my understanding it does not make any difference on Linux wether the Bios Option is enabled or disabled. The target hardware count is even less as it would only be useful for mobile Intel hardware with integrated microphone and not on Desktops with arbitrary also devices via USB or onboard.

Massimo-B avatar Aug 07 '25 15:08 Massimo-B