Voxware expands technology offerings & signs licensing agreement with NTT

Business Wire, Dec 11, 1996

PRINCETON, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 11, 1996--Voxware, Inc. (Nasdaq:VOXW), a developer of advanced audio and speech compression technologies and communications solutions, today announced it has expanded its product line by adding an audio family of coders/decoders ("codecs") called MetaSound(TM). MetaSound is Voxware s first entry into the audio codec arena and is available for shipping to customers. In conjunction with the development of MetaSound, Voxware employed core technology from Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), the largest nationwide supplier of telecommunications services in Japan, in a two-way licensing agreement. The agreement also allows NTT to use some of Voxware's technologies and products in the Japanese market.

"Moving into the audio market was a natural progression for Voxware," noted Michael Goldstein, CEO of Voxware, Inc. "Augmenting our MetaVoice speech family of products with a suite of MetaSound audio codecs provides developers and application integrators the option to select a codec that is best for their application environments from a single supplier."

NTT stated, "We are pleased to supply Voxware with our TwinVQ technology. Voxware's understanding of the Internet marketplace and their world class technologies provide a wonderful complement to NTT s many years of audio-coding research. The combination of our core technology and their expertise in delivering codec solutions and applications that leverage these technologies, and their established ability to support leading application developers, allows us both to bring a new level of quality audio technology platforms to the market."

Potential customers for the new family of audio codecs include independent software vendors who are seeking to embed low-bandwidth, high-quality voice and audio compression technology in their solutions. In addition, solution developers in the interactive education and entertainment segment, telephony and wireless communications, along with Web content providers and developers who are looking to add audio to their application environments are likely to be attracted to MetaSound codecs. The MetaSound codecs will be priced according to individual licensing agreements and have initially been implemented for Windows 95, with other platforms under development.

Narrative Communications Corporation, a premier provider of highly-interactive, feature-length multimedia streaming technologies, is one of the first solution providers using MetaSound. "A phenomenal opportunity exists to provide businesses with the tools necessary for delivering robust multimedia content on the Web using low-bandwidth connections," noted Hilmi Ozguc, President & CEO of Narrative Communications Corp. "Voxware's audio codec technology delivers extremely high quality audio capabilities in these environments, making it an ideal complement to Enliven."

Voxware, Inc. develops, markets, licenses and supports digital speech processing and audio technologies that compress, model and transform speech. Voxware's, MetaSound technology is designed to deliver high quality audio over bandwidth-constrained environments. Voxware's, MetaVoice(TM) coding technology is designed to reproduce high quality speech while requiring very low communications bandwidth and processing power, thereby providing efficient speech compression and a broad array of voice transformation capabilities. Voxware's technologies enable users to create a new generation of audio/speech-enhanced communications and interactive products for the Internet and other bandwidth-constrained environments. The Company licenses its technologies, including its codecs and application programming interfaces, to software, computing and communications companies and distributes its end-user application software to consumers and businesses. Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, Voxware completed its initial public offering in October 1996. Additional information about Voxware, Inc. can be obtained on the Internet at http://www.voxware.com, by sending e-mail to vox@voxware.com or by calling (609) 514-4100. -0- Voxware, MetaSound and MetaVoice are trademarks of Voxware, Inc. All other product names are trademarks of their respective owners.

CONTACT: Voxware, Inc.

Michael Goldstein

President and CEO

or

Kenneth H. Traub

Executive Vice President & CFO

609-514-4100

or

Michele Katz/Jessica Davis/Libby Marshall

Morgen-Walke Associates

Press: Lee Foley

212-850-5600