Abstract: Methods and apparatus for configuring an electronic communication device are disclosed. The methods include determining that the device is operating in a loud speaker mode and a front side of the device is in proximity to a surface, thus determining that the device is in a position associated with acoustic coupling between the loud speaker and the front microphone. The methods include initiating emission of a beacon signal from the loud speaker, determining, dependent on a measured property of the beacon signal received by the front microphone, that the acoustic coupling exceeds a predetermined threshold for high acoustic coupling and, in response, configuring a rear microphone as the primary microphone for capturing audio input. The beacon signal may be an ultrasonic signal. Once the device is no longer in the position associated with acoustic coupling nor experiencing high acoustic coupling, the front microphone may be configured as the primary microphone.

Abstract: A device and method for lower latency digital audio sample playback is provided. The device comprises: a hardware digital signal processor (DSP); higher and lower latency audio paths to the DSP; a kernel driver; a kernel random-access memory (RAM) including kernel RAM buffers accessible by the kernel driver; and a controller. The controller: prior to digital audio samples being used by an application, pre-loads, using the kernel driver, the samples at the kernel RAM buffers; responsive to a trigger in the application to play a given digital audio sample, determines, using a sample identifier of the given sample, whether the given sample is pre-loaded at the kernel RAM buffers; when the sample is pre-loaded, plays, using the DSP, the given sample via the lower latency path; and when the given digital audio sample is not pre-loaded, plays, using the DSP, the given sample via the higher latency path.