Speech is an efficient way for people to express ideas and desires. Before the industrial age, humans discovered that animals could be trained to recognize and respond to basic commands instructing them to perform a task. The next logical step was to develop a way to communicate with and command our machines using our voices. The use of voice and audio as a control interface for electronic devices has grown in popularity in recent years, and it is evolving to meet users’ expectations and the requirements of new applications. In this article, we explain the benefits of voice and audio to control electronic equipment and machines and review how it is implemented. We also show how this control interface can now be embedded into offline devices and how the audio experience they provide can be greatly improved.