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Tag: audio-codec

  • Skype Seeks To Establish Common Audio Codec by Offering High-Quality Silk for Free







    Skype is to license for free a high-quality audio codec in its latest VoIP software to any developer or vendor.

    Called Silk, the "super-wideband" codec delivers a sound quality that captures the full sound of the human voice.

    Jonathan Christensen, Skype’s general manager of audio and video, launched the licensing program earlier this week at the eComm conference in California.

    He said that the normal phone system uses a narrow band for voice, from 400Hz to 3,400Hz, that cuts off high and low frequencies.

    Silk allows Skype to reproduce the full range of typical voice frequencies audible to the human ear, from 50Hz to 12,000Hz.

    So, while traditional systems carry voice in a standard 64Kb per second (Kbps) channel – which has disadvantages, such as blurring the difference between similar sounds such as "f" and "s" – VoIP can be carried in a fatter pipe.

    This has allowed new codecs to be written to encode and decode voice at higher quality.

    Benefits of this include helping callers identify different speakers on conference calls and making calls sound generally warmer, according to Christensen.

    Additionally, the new codec requires half the network bandwidth of Skype’s previous version.

    Christensen said the codec will be made freely available to third-party developers. They will be able to use it in any device or application, with or without Skype.

    "We think this is a way the whole industry can come up to a new standard of voice quality," he said.

    Skype’s motivation for making Silk available for free is to expand the range of hardware and software clients its calling software works with by establishing a common codec for clients to adopt.

    This goes from PC software, headsets and videoconferencing systems to cordless phones and mobiles.

    Silk runs on x86 chipsets for Windows, Macintosh and Linux systems, and the software has been run on Arm and MIPS chip platforms.

    It is currently available as Skype 4.0 for Windows and as a Macintosh beta version 2.8. A final Mac version and one for Linux are due in April.

  • Zoran's New Processors Spell Thinner HDTVs


    HDTVs may seem wafer thin already but don’t expect the drive for even slimmer models to stop anytime soon.

    The Zoran Corporation has just announced a pair of new HDTV processors that should help set manufacturers shave a tad more off their future sets.

    Its new SupraHD processors eliminate multiple components from the DTV system design by integrating the TV microcontroller, 8VSB demodulator, audio codec, audio multiplexer, analog video multiplexer and a stack of other functions, including advanced audio processing and color management capabilities, into the single-chip solution.

    If that wasn’t enough, Zoran said its high integration enables a more energy-efficient design, which allows DTV manufacturers to meet the federal Energy Star requirements.

    Jun Kawaguchi, director of the HDTV product line in Zoran’s Home Entertainment division, said the continued integration of DTV functionality into one SoC had many advantages for both TV manufacturers and end users.

    As well as reduced costs and power consumption, he told hdtv.biz-news.com that another benefit of the new SupraHD-785 and SupraHD-775 processors was that they enabled improvements to set design.

    "Lower power, smaller PC boards allow design flexibility that permit thinner, smaller and lighter TVs," he said.

    Kawaguchi said that by integrating multiple components into one chip, the PCB dimension can be reduced and production costs minimized.

    He said reduced costs to manufacturers usually meant lower costs to consumers as well.

    Other factors included improved engineering cost and schedule, which meant TV manufacturers had less engineering development burden, as multiple functionalities can be addressed by one product.

    This reduces the engineering workload for manufacturer, and also accelerates engineering schedules, according to Kawaguchi.

    The SupraHD® 775 and SupraHD® 785 processors integrated functions include the following:

    • TV Microcontroller and unified memory design
    • Market-proven Cascade® ATSC / NTSC / QAM demodulator
    • Audio analog-to-digital converter with 6 stereo pair inputs
    • Audio digital-to-analog converter
    • Three HDMI v.1.3 inputs
    • Advanced audio processing including virtual surround sound and audio expansion capabilities
    • Advanced color management
    • Two 1080P YPbPr analog video inputs
    • WUXGA PC analog video input
    • Three S-video inputs and four composite video inputs with 3D comb filter
    • Integrated dual channel LVDS transmitters with xvYCC Wide Color Gamut support
    • Content adaptive 1080i deinterlacer for interlaced analog video inputs
    • Six stereo pair analog audio inputs
    • Two stereo pair analog audio outputs
    • Picture-in-Picture function
    • USB 2.0 input
    • MPEG noise reduction provides block-free reception of digital transmission