Apple has hired away a digital signal processing expert from its supplier Audience in an effort to improve audio expertise, MacRumors has noticed. Dana Massie joined Apple this month as an SoC Audio Architect.

Prior to joining Apple, Massie worked for Audience for nine years as Director of DSP chip architecture, managing the DSP chip architecture for the “most advanced audio processing algorithms available for speech enhancements”, and held the Senior Research Director position at Waves for 2.5 years.

As it turns out, Massie is not a new Apple employee: he worked at the company between 2002 and 2003, managing a team responsible for standard audio input–output subsystems on Apple’s desktop and laptop platforms.

Audience became an Apple supplier with the iPhone 4 and 4S, as the handset incorporated an Audience voice processing chip, and the earSmart noise cancellation technology, which was a key factor in powering Siri with the iPhone 4S.

Massie’s LinkedIn profile doesn’t reveal too much about his work at Apple. He just shared that after six weeks of sabbatical leave, he will join the iPhone maker on December 1 to work on some audio stuff.