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Curtain lifts, Audience exposed as iPhone 4's noise cancelling wizard

It's hard not to respect good detective work, so we have to give kudos to the good folks at Chipworks for putting a long-lived iPhone mystery to rest. The iPhone 4 has been applauded for its dual-mic noise cancellation, but nobody knew who actually built the voice processor responsible for this "magic and revolutionary" feature. Jobs and Co. white-labelled a certain chipset inside the iPhone 4 -- it asked the manufacturer to scrub all branding off -- so nobody could properly identify it. Was it made by Apple or a third party? Fast-forward nearly eleven months and it turns out the company responsible is none other than Audience, the same lovely folks behind the Nexus One's renowned noise reduction. We're unsure why this was kept under wraps for so long, but we can understand why Apple would want to remain quiet and keep this superb technology all to itself. A little sleuthing can go a long way, however, so follow the links below to learn how this mystery was unraveled.