Project

Embedded Audio Systems

High-quality sound in professional audio production has required large ASICs or power-hungry DSPs to get the work done. Even the MPEG-4 audio standard has unrealistic demands in its core technology to be ported to low-power handhelds and consumer products. This project has brought the same high audio standards to low-power processors embedded in hand-held formats. This is a redesign of the Structured Audio core that Media Lab contributed to the MPEG-4 standard. SA's floating-point processing has now been redesigned to suit a low-power 16-bit processor, and the first port to an Analog Devices 16-bit Blackfin processor is now running and demonstrable. While ring tones and MIDI-encoded melodies are trivial, the power of this system is revealed not only in its 64-voice synthetic orchestras with audio-post effects (reverb, chorusing) but also in simultaneous voice processing with automatic harmonization and tempo tracking. Try doing that on your mobile!