This disclosure describes techniques that include aligning processing of audio samples collected by multiple audio sensors or microphones. In one example, this disclosure describes a method comprising enabling a first microphone; processing, by an audio processor and using a first processing pipeline, audio data samples collected by the first microphone; enabling a second microphone a period of time after enabling the first microphone; processing, by the audio processor and using a second processing pipeline, a sample of audio data collected by the second microphone by synchronizing starting times for the first and second processing pipelines.