Micronas' Audio BoxTM II brings the music of the Internet to the consumers' homes (0015)
Freiburg, Germany - October 11, 2000 - Micronas (SWX: MASN; Frankfurt Neuer Markt: MNSN) has announced its latest Audio Box IITM product. The Audio Box II is a streaming interface that enables traditional home stereo equipment to be connected to the PC to deliver digital audio from the Internet. Audio Box II is a reference design based on Micronas' USB Audio DAC, UAC 3552A. The announcement comes only a few months after the company introduced its Audio Box platform concept.
The interface enables a reliable connection through a USB cable directly connected to the PC, enabling it to stream digital audio including Internet radio. The software integrated in the PC's operating system allows it to be controlled by the popular audioplayer Winamp and supports Windows Media Player.
Also available is a music browser for title selection and media control such as play, forward and rewind, which is very similar to existing CD-players and other consumer products. The new Audio Box II is capable of communicating to subsystems with an integrated Dolby Pro Logic Surround decoder. Decoding is performed through the popular Micronas MSP3452G sound processor.
"Digital networks are the main source of music content of the future," said Kai Scheffer, marketing manager multimedia products for Micronas. "The Audio Box is the hardware platform that enables easy access to the portals that offer people the vast music resources of the Internet. The consumer doesn't even have to be computer literate to access, download and play the music. It is as user-friendly as today's stereo equipment or TV set."
Since its hardware platform consists basically of two chips, the USB Audio DAC UAC 3552 and the sound processor MSP 3452G, space is not an issue for integration into consumer devices. The Audio Box uses the existing equipment's control panel and display, making it a cost effective solution for integration in stereo equipment or TV sets. According to Scheffer, the Audio Box uses the PC's processor as the backbone, and thus requires no microcontroller, networking interface, memory, local hard drive or special operating system. It can therefore be offered at a price below US$ 10, a fraction of the cost of existing systems.
The latest trend in e-commerce is for companies to create digital music subscription that allow consumers to enjoy music beyond their PC. The Audio Box offers a user-friendly hardware platform to enable these companies to deliver their products to the consumer's home stereos equipment and TV-sets. Independent market research reports indicate that by 2005, 41 percent of the US population will listen to personalized, on-demand audio.
The introduction of the Audio Box Platform paves the way for a new generation of interactive products connecting PCs not only with home stereo equipment, but also mini stereo components and new audio products such as MP3 players and home audio servers.
As the Audio Box II supports all audio compression formats such as MP3, AAC, WMA, Liquid Audio and RealAudio as well as Internet radio standards and integrates seamlessly into the computer's operation system. This is essential because even if details about future compression standards are unknown today, it is certain that they will be decodable on the PC platform, thus securing the consumer's investment in this product and prolonging the product life cycles.
A reference design is available as design-in support for OEMs.