DSP-Based Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Selected as Sound Card for Dell PCs; Board Designed for Digital Music, 3D Games and Business Audio.Business Editors and High-Tech Writers YONKERS, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 13, 2000 The forthcoming Turtle Beach Santa Cruz(tm) audio accelerator has been designated by Dell Computer (Nasdaq:DELL) as a sound upgrade for various Dell(R) product lines. This further expands Voyetra Turtle Beach's relationship with Dell, which currently offers the Turtle Beach Montego II sound card to its customers. Powered by Cirrus Logic's Crystal(R) 420MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second) The execution speed of a computer. For example, .5 MIPS is 500,000 instructions per second; 100 MIPS is a hundred million instructions per second. digital signal processor A digital signal processor (DSP) is a specialized microprocessor designed specifically for digital signal processing, generally in real-time computing. Characteristics of typical Digital Signal Processors
(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. sound, the DSP will focus its processing power on accelerating the 3D streams. If the user instead decides to create a richer sound by applying the included effect algorithms, the Santa Cruz DSP will handle the effect processing. "We've been working with Dell since February 1998, offering our Montego A3D (hardware) A3D - (Aureal 3-Dimensional?) A technology developed by Aureal that delivers sound with a three-dimensional effect through two speakers. Many modern sound cards and PC games now support this feature. and Montego II cards as both standard and optional equipment in a number of Dell's PC product lines," said H.J. Lee, vice-president of 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 sales. "Whether the new Santa Cruz audio accelerator is used for MP3 digital music, gaming, business audio or PC-based home entertainment, it's a flexible yet affordable card." A retail version of the Santa Cruz is now shipping, with a suggested price of US$99. Turtle Beach anticipates that the Santa Cruz will be primarily used for: Digital music playback. The Santa Cruz accelerates MP3 decoding, thereby freeing the host 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. for processing other tasks during playback of MP3 files. PC game playing. In addition to providing six output channels, Santa Cruz supports major 3D audio standards, including EAX (Environmental Audio Extensions) Sound card functions that reproduce the reverberation effects heard in different environments. Developed by Creative Labs, EAX provides an extension to the Windows DirectSound and OpenAL programming interfaces. (tm), A3D(tm), I3DL2, DirectSound3D, and Sensaura's MacroFX(tm) and MultiDrive(tm). The card also includes Sensaura's new VirtualEar(tm) technology, which heightens the 3D experience by conforming positional algorithms to an individual user's ear characteristics. Music recording and auditioning. The Santa Cruz offers a wealth of features for desktop music production, including super-low noise analog circuitry; 18-bit resolution recording from four sources simultaneously; six-channel, 20-bit playback; a 10-band hardware EQ; multi-channel effects processing; and an 8MB DLS-compatible wavetable 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. . Home theater-style entertainment. For PC home-theater effects, the Santa Cruz allows the pass-through of digital streams (e.g., Dolby Digital) to dual S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital InterFace) A serial interface for transferring digital audio from CD and DVD players to amplifiers and TVs. S/PDIF is typically used to transmit PCM and Dolby Digital 5.1, but is not tied to any sampling rate or audio standard. outputs for external decoding and creating environmental ambiance am·bi·ance also am·bi·ence n. The special atmosphere or mood created by a particular environment: "The noir ambience is dominated by low-key lighting . . . within multi-speaker rooms. Business applications. The Santa Cruz supports acoustic echo cancellation algorithms for enhancing videoconferencing or speakerphone applications. Voice recognition performance is also improved by the aforementioned high-resolution converters and exceptionally low signal-to-noise and total harmonic distortion The total harmonic distortion, or THD, of a signal is a measurement of the harmonic distortion present and is defined as the ratio of the sum of the powers of all harmonic components to the power of the fundamental. levels. The DSP's ability to process four independent microphone signals supports an optional, low-cost array microphone that creates a narrow "listening area" to eliminate extraneous noise in an office environment. Additional distinctive Santa Cruz features include automatic shutdown to eliminate power on/off thumps; automatic sensing of rear jack connections to notify the user of the card's input/output capabilities; and a unique hardware matrix system for automated diagnostic support. Voyetra Turtle Beach is one of the world's leading PC audio solutions providers, working with more than 150 leading manufacturers, distributors and retailers. In addition to its OEM and retail sales, Voyetra Turtle Beach makes its entire line of products available directly to consumers via its e-commerce Web site (http://www.turtle-beach.com) and customer service center (1-800-233-9377 or 914-966-0600). For more information, write Voyetra Turtle Beach Inc., 5 Odell Plaza, Yonkers, NY 10701; call 800-233-9377 or 914-966-0600; fax 914-966-1102; send e-mail to sales@turtle-beach.com; or visit www.turtle-beach.com. Voyetra is a registered trademark, Turtle Beach and Turtle Beach Santa Cruz are trademarks of Voyetra Turtle Beach Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies and are hereby acknowledged. |
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