Sounding Better Than Ever: High Quality Audio Simon Forrest Connected Home Marketing www.imgtec.com
A brief look at the numbers Market trends Worldwide audio market 2014 67.9m units shipped 16% increase in volume on 2013 $9.0bn revenues increase of 14% Two market segments dominate Wireless speakers Soundbars Favoured instead of home cinema systems Trend towards integrating wireless technology Account for over 81% of all audio products, and $8.4bn in revenues by 2019 Source: Futuresource, March 2015 Imagination Technologies US Summit May 2015 2
The audio landscape is changing Another revolution in digital audio technology Migration towards wireless audio technology By 2019, over 80% of audio equipment will be wireless Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, with increasing potential for 802.11ah Multi-room Multi-channel audio Stereo and surround sound Imagination s Caskeid offers the ideal solution Channel-based Object-based audio Swift transition to Hi-Res Audio Sound reproduction at 24bit/96kHz and higher File formats include FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF and DSD; lossless audio Imagination Technologies US Summit May 2015 3
Requirements for high fidelity audio Audio applications demand a balance of performance and efficiency MIPS hardware multi-threading offers high latency tolerance Choose between efficiency with DSP or performance using MSA Cost-effective SoC design IP design efficiency Lower frequency cores Older geometries Cost savings Wireless audio requires new thinking Low-power cores increased battery life Tight synchronization Solutions for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Communications IP for audio transmission Full suite of codecs for every application FM Imagination Technologies US Summit May 2015 4
Typical connected audio system Primary building blocks Application software Data flow manager Audio framework (including multi-stream, stereo, 5.1 etc.) MP3, AAC, etc. Dolby, DTS, etc. G.722, G.711, etc EQ, Volume, etc. OS support Audio out Audio in, source Cloud stream Local file Network Base audio Codecs Advanced Codecs Voice Post processing CPU DSP MSA RPU Imagination Technologies US Summit May 2015 5
Software ALSA OpenMax Gstreamer Imagination s audio framework Application level code Audio Application Middleware Plug in Plug in Multiple input & multiple output with flexible routing matrix Multi-instance support for separate streams No codec development required Kernel level code AXD driver Linux OS AXD firmware (inc. codec packs) Hardware Peripherals MIPS processor Memory Imagination Technologies US Summit May 2015 6
Audio Codec Support MIPS delivers a full suite of audio codecs Comprehensive list of over 70 codecs Audio Voice HD & Hi-Res audio Encoding Decoder Dolby (AC3, DD+) FLAC ALAC SBC Encoder AAC FLAC ALAC SBC PostProc Resampler Volume Control Class D Mixer Lossless DTS FLAC ALAC Dolby True HD Transcoder DTS M8 Transcoding Opus Opus Neo6 Post processing Vorbis Dolby PLII Conformance testing WMA AAC v2 MPEG DTS Imagination Technologies US Summit May 2015 7
Why is precise synchronization so important? Stereo image is created by inter-aural timing differences Humans have acute perception of sound spatial location Created by the brain analysing differences in arrival time between audio signals Can distinguish between sources as little as 3 apart Fractions of milliseconds are sufficient to determine exact sound location 640µS delay 90 shift in stereo positioning Delays of microseconds create perception of several degrees variation in sound location Surround sound and A/V lip-sync demand very precise synchronization Imagination Technologies US Summit May 2015 8
Introducing Caskeid Wireless multi-room and multi-channel audio Class leading hardware & software delivers Wired performance wirelessly Industry leading synchronization 1 st Gen @ 20µS; 2 nd Gen @ under 5µS Low latency, immediate response Sub 30ms latency Multi-room & multi-channel capability Separate channels & zones, true stereo, surround sound and object-based audio rendering Supports all major ecosystems; content agnostic Airplay, Google Cast, AllJoyn, Spotify, Bluetooth, DLNA From MP3 to Meridian MQA; lossy lossless Imagination Technologies US Summit May 2015 9
Caskeid Software Components SmartConfig Management of master-slave group organization StreamXprs Optimized throughput from Wi-Fi stack direct to audio engine Provides very low latency required for A/V synchronization Optimizes wireless arrangement to maximize robustness and bandwidth utilization StreamSync Patented wireless synchronization technology Guaranteed sub 20µS alignment between all speakers on the network Imagination Technologies US Summit May 2015 10
Measurement of audio performance Accurate synchronization is vital Left channel Other solutions do not maintain accurate synchronization And this is just stereo! 5.1 surround demands higher processing and tight synchronization Likewise object-based audio Caskeid Class-leading performance 20µS maximum deviation, regardless of the number of speakers Right channel Accurate audio reproduction Imagination Technologies US Summit May 2015 11
High quality matters The move towards improved audio fidelity MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) hi-res audio Delivers digital audio to consumers exactly as recorded in the studio Innovative and efficient coding implementation to capture original source Exploits existing streaming technology and lossless containers High quality audio is recognized as essential Licensees and partners benefit from Imagination s audio technology today Imagination Technologies US Summit May 2015 12
Example audio IP subsystem platform Powerful connected multi-standard, Caskeid-ready audio solution Key Features 802.11ac 2x2 Bluetooth 4.0 Ethernet controller (MAC) 500MHz MIPS I-Class CPU Dual core, multithreaded, 56k L2 caches Supports Linux, multiple RTOS Wide range of audio decoders PCM, MPEG I/II, REAL, HE-AAC, WMA Ogg Vorbis, FLAC Dolby Digital Decoder [5.1ch] Dolby Digital Plus [7.1ch] Full Caskeid support DMAC Ensigma C4500 802.11ac 2x2 BT 4.0/LE JTAG & Test PSU and Clock & Power Control Reset Control System NOC Bridge Peripheral Bus Audio DAC MIPS InterAptiv Dual Core CPU 64kB L1 cache ROM 512kB L2 cache Aux ADC RAM DDR2 Imagination Technologies US Summit May 2015 13
In summary Sounding better than ever The audio market is changing significantly Integration of wireless technology Migration to high quality audio reproduction Imagination provides best-in-class hardware and software audio IP Over a decade of continuous innovation Licensable IP cores with all elements necessary for high quality connected audio SoCs Proven technology OEM products shipping in volume today Imagination Technologies US Summit May 2015 14
Thank You! www.imgtec.com