Music player IC improves audio quality, playtime on portables

Unterpremstaetten, Austria—austriamicrosystems has introduced the AS3532 music player subsystem - the first member of a family of media player ICs aimed at bridging the gap between the audio experience of music phones and Hi-Fi home audio devices. According to the company, the AS3532 includes audio processing engines normally used only in high-performance home audio and PC sound cards to support high-definition audio and to deliver sub-5-mW power consumption for all popular compressed audio formats.

The core of the AS3532 is based on a newly developed audio engine and audio post-processor which act as co-processors to an ARM central programmable unit. The audio engine, in a fully hardwired context, is claimed to execute the decompression and playback of most popular compressed audio formats, like MP3, WMA and AAC for the least amount of power consumption with zero CPU load.

The audio post-processor implements an Asynchronous Sample Rate Converter (ASRC) with claimed near transparent quality, a multi-channel mixer with limiting function and a 10-band graphics equalizer, and supports 192-kHz sample rates at 24-bit dynamic range for high-definition audio processing. Three sets of I²S outputs can independently control stereo speakers, subwoofer and headphone or line outputs; these can also be used as multi-channel audio outputs. The AS3532 audio subsystem also includes a stereo PDM digital microphone input.

Included interfaces can support either peer mode to a baseband phone IC or a "Black Box" companion music sub-system. In the latter case, the IC provides direct support for latest generation removable and embedded flash memory types with 4/8/16-bit hardware ECC, for MLC NAND Flash, iNAND, LBA NAND, moviNAND, oneNAND and removable card formats like SD2.0, MMC+, CE-ATA, MS PRO and CF.

An on-chip 512-Kbyte buffer memory allows single-chip support of all key audio formats, compressed, lossless and high definition, polyphonic sequenced content, wavetable synthesizer, 3D positional sound, virtualizer engines and other digital audio effects. A comprehensive SDK is available.

"As file storage and communications bandwidth have become less expensive and more readily available, lossless audio formats which are a bit perfect representation of the original master source have become ever more popular, because people want to maintain a permanent archive of their high quality audio files," commented Roberto Simmarano, Senior Marketing Director Business Unit Communications at austriamicrosystems. "AS3532 offers full lossless audio format support making it the perfect hardware platform to realize these consumer demands in the mobile phone environment."

The AS3532 is sampling in a 6 x 6-mm CTBGA package. Depending on the mobile phone architecture, a matching high-definition integrated audio front-end and power management component can be provided in the same package.

austriamicrosystems, +43 3136 500-0, www.austriamicrosystems.com