Brooktree revolutionizes PC sound, makes wavetable synthesis software available for OEM licensing; WaveStream(TM) lets PCs play MIDI music without expensive hardware; it will now be made available for OEM licensing to leading audio chip, add-in board and multimedia PC vendors.SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 13, 1995--Brooktree Corp. (NASDAQ NASDAQ in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on :BTRE BTRE Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics (formerly Bureau of Transport Economics; Australia) BTRE Broadcast Television Recording Engineers ) today announced it is making its WaveStream wavetable synthesis software available for OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) The rebranding of equipment and selling it. The term initially referred to the company that made the products (the "original" manufacturer), but eventually became widely used to refer to the organization that buys the products and licensing to leading vendors of audio chips, add-in cards and multimedia PCs. The company's Wavestream software solution offers a high-performance, next-generation PC sound solution for OEMs, content developers and end-users who want the PC industry's highest standard of sound quality without requiring expensive sound hardware, and without losing the ability to play General MIDI-compatible games and software in DOS. The WaveStream software-only synthesizer synthesizer Machine that electronically generates and modifies sounds, frequently with the use of a digital computer, for use in the composition of electronic music and in live performance. resides as a software module in Windows(TM) 3.1. It uses system memory to hold the required instruments which are read from a hard disk-based sample library, yet it provides sound quality that is virtually indistinguishable from expensive dedicated wavetable synthesis hardware. Brooktree believes it is the only solution of its kind to give mainstream, off-the-shelf PCs full General MIDI (GM) compatibility, 32-voice polyphony polyphony (pəlĭf`ənē), music whose texture is formed by the interweaving of several melodic lines. The lines are independent but sound together harmonically. and a rich 8MB sample set, all with minimal impact on CPU CPU in full central processing unit Principal component of a digital computer, composed of a control unit, an instruction-decoding unit, and an arithmetic-logic unit. performance for any other concurrently running tasks or applications -- even on Intel-compatible 486 33 MHz (MegaHertZ) One million cycles per second. It is used to measure the transmission speed of electronic devices, including channels, buses and the computer's internal clock. A one-megahertz clock (1 MHz) means some number of bits (16, 32, 64, etc. CPU platforms. "Intel is leading the way with Native Signal Processing See NSP. , or NSP (1) (Network Service Provider) An organization that provides a high-speed Internet backbone to ISPs and other service providers. Sprint, MCI and UUNET are examples of NSPs. See Internet backbones. , which uses the Pentium processor instead of DSP-based solutions to do such functions as high-quality PC sound. We think WaveStream takes another big step down the road of leveraging the Pentium," said Joe Monastiero, senior product marketing manager for Brooktree. "Based on early previews, the reception for WaveStream has been enthusiastic, not just among PC OEMs, but also from content developers who are anxiously awaiting a common, high-performance sound platform for both existing and new games and applications," Monastiero added. "The marketplace has recognized that with WaveStream you can have high-quality General MIDI music as a standard feature on mainstream personal computers, with little or no cost premium over conventional FM synthesis-based PC audio solutions. "We had a number of potential customers express interest in WaveStream after we announced it in November as part of our BtV MediaStream integrated multimedia accelerator chipset, and so we have decided to unbundle To sell components in a system separately. Contrast with bundle. it and offer it for OEM licensing." General MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface (music, hardware, protocol, file format) Musical Instrument Digital Interface - (MIDI /mi'-dee/, /mee'-dee/) A hardware specification and protocol used to communicate note and effect information between synthesisers, computers, music keyboards, controllers, and other electronic ) is the standard defined by the musical industry for 128 common instruments that can be transparently exchanged between different manufacturers' MIDI playback hardware and software. This standard established a set of instrument sounds that correspond to MIDI program change numbers. Each instrument is assigned a unique number, so that sequencers playing back MIDI song files on all General MIDI-compatible synthesizers will play the composition's requested instruments. "WaveStream brings the high-quality MIDI music standard to the mainstream Windows PC, while still ensuring compatibility with existing DOS-based, General MIDI-compatible games that can be launched from Windows," Monastiero said. "It will finally provide a music playback environment that is acceptable to software developers who have avoided MIDI sequencing in their games and applications, due to the perceived inadequacies of FM playback technology." WaveStream can be used in applications ranging from enhancing DOS and Windows games, educational titles and PC presentations, to performing full MIDI composition and sequencing. WaveStream's inclusion of an MPU-401 emulation mode ensures compatibility with DOS games and other applications that function in a full or partial screen under Windows and support the GM standard. The WaveStream solution comes complete with a sample library that was developed exclusively for Brooktree by industry leader Q Up Arts of Aptos, Calif., creators of a broad range of popular sample collections for both the consumer and professional digital sound markets. Designed to run on both Pentium-class and 486 CPUs, WaveStream's unique MIPS-saving features allow it to bring wavetable synthesis to platforms starting as low as a 486/33 machine. For instance, WaveStream's DynaVoice(TM) instrument caching feature frees Windows system RAM for other uses by intelligently loading and caching instruments only when MIDI sequences are required. Users can also dynamically adjust simultaneous voice requirements to further offload the CPU. Similarly, WaveStream's unique MultiSynth(TM) hybrid mode allows a user-definable mixture of Wavetable A group of sampled sound waves used in MIDI. See wavetable synthesis and MIDI. (hardware, music) wavetable - A type of sound generator often built in a sound card. A wavetable contains digitised samples of real instrument sounds or effect (FX) sounds. software synthesis and FM hardware synthesis that frees up additional CPU MIPs. The older FM synthesis technology involves manipulating digitally controlled oscillators along with time-variant volume and pitch envelopes to artificially approximate recognizable sounds and instruments. Wavetable synthesis, on the other hand, achieves significantly higher-fidelity and more realistic sound by starting with a collection of digitally sampled sounds created from real instruments, searching the library for the closest note range on the musical scale, and then recreating timbre timbre Quality of sound that distinguishes one instrument, voice, or other sound source from another. Timbre largely results from a characteristic combination of overtones produced by different instruments. by using powerful DSP (1) (Digital Signal Processor) A special-purpose CPU used for digital signal processing applications (see definition #2 below). It provides ultra-fast instruction sequences, such as shift and add, and multiply and add, which are commonly used in math-intensive algorithms for pitch shifting, filtering, interpolation interpolation In mathematics, estimation of a value between two known data points. A simple example is calculating the mean (see mean, median, and mode) of two population counts made 10 years apart to estimate the population in the fifth year. and signal conditioning. The large (8MB) size of WaveStream's instrument sample set provides plenty of room for precision non-sampled note interpolation, as well as for the higher-quality sample looping that is necessary for more realistic instrument replication. The WaveStream synthesizer is implemented as a Windows virtual device driver See VxD. (operating system) Virtual Device Driver - (VxD) A device driver under Windows 3.x/Windows 95 running as part of the kernel and thus having access to the memory of the kernel and all running processes as well as raw access to the hardware. (VxD) software module. Designed around a 16-bit sampled library, WaveStream uses adaptive dynamic filtering to optimize expressiveness, and high-quality interpolation techniques to go beyond 8-bit mono samples and yield 22kHz, 16-bit stereo output. WaveStream supports a broad range of real-time control processes for popular musical effects. A Windows MCI (1) (Media Control Interface) A high-level programming interface from Microsoft and IBM for controlling multimedia devices. It provides commands and functions to open, play and close the device. (2) (Microwave Communications Inc. driver provides the interface between the Windows multimedia layer and the synthesizer, and provides multimedia developers with seamless access to the WaveStream module. Any existing application software that uses the well-defined MCI API layer can gain immediate access to the WaveStream technology. OEM customers interested in licensing WaveStream should contact the Applications Hotline at 800-2BT-APPS, or e-mail Brooktree at wavestream(at-sign)brooktree.com. Brooktree Corp. designs and markets high-performance digital and mixed-signal integrated circuits for computer graphics, multimedia and communications applications. The company, which has its headquarters in San Diego, employs more than 575 people worldwide. Revenues for the fiscal year ended Sept. 24, 1994, were $109 million. Brooktree stock is traded on the NASDAQ National Market System under the symbol BTRE. More information on Brooktree Corp. is available from the company's SEC filings, or by contacting the company directly. CONTACT: Brooktree Corp., San Diego Bill Berridge, Karen Paulovich, 619/535-3273, -3516 (company contact) or Carolyn Fromm, Elizabeth Deans, 714/753-0755 (editorial contact) |
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