Aureal Semiconductor

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Aureal Semiconductor Inc.
SubsidiariesCrystal River Engineering
Footnotes / references
[1]

Aureal Semiconductor Inc. was an American

Pro Audio Spectrum 16
.

History

In May 1996, Aureal Semiconductor was founded from what previously was Media Vision Technologies Inc. after being involved in a financial scandal that led to then-CEO Paul Jain stepping down. Media Vision incurred approximately $104 million of aggregate losses in 1995 before the company was renamed.

Aureal sustained further losses of $17 million in 1996 and $18 million in 1997.[2] After having acquired Crystal River Engineering in May 1996, Aureal worked with them to develop and market the A3D audio technology.[3] The technology was incorporated into video games, surround sound systems and sound cards.

On March 5, 1998

A3D
. The purchase effectively eliminated Creative's only competition in the gaming audio market, and with it any requirements for Creative to pay past or future royalties as well as damages for products which incorporated Aureal's technology.

Technologies and products

Contrary to

fabless semiconductor company. This changed with their final product: the Aureal SuperQuad. However, to not anger the middlemen, Aureal did no marketing of its self-branded product.[citation needed
]

Vortex

Vortex 1 sound card with AU8820B2-chip
Vortex 2 logo branding

The Vortex audio accelerator

Turtle Beach and TerraTec. After Aureal's release of A3D 2.0, the Vortex AU8830 (known as the Vortex 2) was announced on August 6, 1998.[5] The Vortex 2 chipset won numerous industry awards, and was used among other places in the Diamond
Monster Sound MX300, which achieved near-cult status with audiophiles and gamers for the high quality of its positional audio.

Near the end of Aureal's existence, they released a Vortex Advantage budget sound card aimed at systems integrators, which ran on the Vortex AU8810 chipset.[6] Towards the end of 1999, the SQ3500 was announced, which ran on the Vortex AU8830 chipset, with the main addition being a new "Turbo DSP" daughter-board module.[7]

All Vortex soundcards are still functional with latest

beta releases.[citation needed
]


A3D

"A3D" redirects here. For the U.S. Navy bomber aircraft, see Douglas A-3 Skywarrior.
A3D "Interactive" logo

A3D (Aureal 3-Dimensional) is the technology used by Aureal Semiconductor in their Vortex line of PC sound chips to deliver three-dimensional sound through headphones, two or even four speakers. The technology used

Creative Labs
.

The technology was originally developed by Crystal River Engineering for NASA's Virtual Environment Workstation Project (VIEW). Crystal River later commercialized the technology with a series of products including the Convolvotron and the Acoustetron. Aureal acquired Crystal River in May 1996[8] and rebranded the technology A3D.

A3D differs from various forms of discrete positional audio in that it only requires two speakers, while surround sound typically requires more than four. The particular advantage of A3D is for dynamic or interactive environments such as simulations, games, video conference, and remote learning. A3D is not as effective for static productions such as movies which typically employ surround sound.

A3D uses a subset of the actual in-game 3D world data to accurately model the location of both direct (A3Dspace) and reflected (A3Dverb) sound streams (A3D 2.0 can perform up to 60 first-order reflections). EAX 1.0, the competing technology at the time promoted by Creative Labs, simulated the environment with an adjustable reverb—it didn't calculate any actual reflections off the 3D surfaces.

A3D was supported by

Jedi Knight, SiN, Quake III Arena (up to version 1.25), Unreal Tournament and Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force
.

Following Aureal Semiconductor's acquisition by Creative, support for the API was discontinued.


See also

References

  1. ^ https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/892433/0000891618-97-001357.txt. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  2. ^ U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission - 1998/07/13 PROSPECTUS FILED PURSUANT TO RULE 424(B)(4) - Aureal Semiconductor
  3. ^ "Real World Audio". Spinoff 1998. 1998-01-01.
  4. ^ "Aureal Introduces Vortex Single-Chip PCI Audio Accelerator". Aureal Semiconductor Inc. July 14, 1997. Archived from the original on October 14, 1997.
  5. ^ "Aureal Announces Vortex 2: Next Generation PCI Audio Processor". Aureal Semiconductor Inc. August 6, 1998. Archived from the original on August 28, 1999.
  6. ^ "Aureal Announces Vortex Advantage Soundcard for Systems Integrators". Aureal Semiconductor Inc. May 5, 1999. Archived from the original on August 28, 1999.
  7. ^ Andrawes, Mike. "Audio Report - Comdex '99". www.anandtech.com. Retrieved 2021-10-22.
  8. ^ "Aureal Semiconductor Acquires Crystal River Engineering". PR Newswire. 1996-05-08.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aureal_Semiconductor&oldid=1284283189"