Texas
Instruments and QDesign Announce Enhanced Digital Audio Music Storage
Design for Portable Players
New Reference Design to Offer Users Five Times More Storage Capacity
Houston (July 13, 1999) - Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) and QDesign
Corporation today announced an agreement to pair TI's world-leading programmable
digital signal processors (DSPs) with QDesign's advanced Music Codec.
The design will give consumers the ability to create and store up to five
times more music on portable audio players while maintaining high audio
fidelity.
TI, the world leader in DSP and analog, will deliver a hardware design
using the industry-leading programmable, low-power TMS320C5000 DSP, which
QDesign will use to support the recording, storage and playback of QDesign
Music files. QDesign's music application will allow users to encode their
favorite music from audio CDs to both MP3 and QDesign Music files. Users
also may convert MP3 audio files to smaller QDesign Music files for longer
playback time on both desktop computers and TI DSP-based portable audio
devices.
QDesign developed the QDesign Music Codec to deliver the highest quality
audio at the lowest possible data rates. Apple Computer, Inc. has adopted
the new generation audio coding technology as the audio compression solution
for QuickTime 4, the industry standard for web-based audio and video streaming.
Apple's QuickTime 4 is integral to the TI - QDesign reference design.
With this new platform, QuickTime is used as the architecture to download
music files from the Internet, store them and play them back.
"QuickTime is fast becoming the favorite way to stream video and audio
over the web, with more than eight million downloads since its introduction
in April," said Phil Schiller, Apple's vice president of worldwide product
marketing. "Together with TI and QDesign, QuickTime is helping to create
the next platform for portable digital music."
"TI and QDesign offer a solution to manufacturers that want to provide
their customers superior sound with more playback time," said Gary Johnson,
TI's DSP portable audio business manager. "TI provides the ideal chip
solution to the Internet audio market because our programmable DSPs allow
manufacturers to make universal players that are adaptable to any compression
format; they enable 50 percent longer battery life in the players; and
we have the most complete library of decompression software and security."
"TI is the leader in digital hardware in the consumer Internet audio market,"
said Richard J. Beaton, president and chief technology officer of QDesign.
"With this TI DSP-based solution, QDesign gives manufacturers automatic
access to QDesign Music playback, and consumers can produce high quality
sound in the QDesign Music format at a fraction the size of typical MP3
files. To offer the most complete solution, manufacturers will also have
the option to include QDesign MP3 encoding functionality in the music
application."
The TI - QDesign solution will follow Secure Digital Music Initiative
(SDMI) guidelines, which seek to protect content owners' rights by building
security measures such as watermarking, encryption and decryption into
compact discs, electronic music distribution (EMD), personal computer
hosts and portable players. TI is a founding member of SDMI and helped
define the inter-industry guidelines, which will support all audio compression
formats that offer secure download measures.
The QDesign Music Codec is an audio coding and decoding technology that
allows music enthusiasts and audio professionals to obtain significantly
higher audio compression than the more common technologies such as MP3.
Over a 28.8K modem, the QDesign Music Codec streams full-bandwidth stereo
audio at unsurpassed quality. The QDesign Music Codec technology scales
up to 128kbits to deliver better than MP3-quality at the same bitrate.
The TI reference design, which includes the QDesign Music Codec, will
be available in late third quarter of 1999 so manufacturers will have
time to develop players in time for Christmas 1999 sales.
Texas Instruments
The worldwide leader and pioneer in digital signal processing solutions
since 1982, Texas Instruments provides innovative DSP and mixed signal/analog
technologies to more than 30,000 customers in the computer, wireless communications,
networking, Internet, consumer, digital motor control and mass storage
markets worldwide. To help customers get to market faster, TI offers easy-to-use
development tools and extensive software and hardware support, enhanced
by its extensive network of third party DSP solutions providers that produce
more than 1,000 products using TI technology.
Texas Instruments Incorporated is a global semiconductor company and the
world's leading designer and supplier of digital signal processing and
analog technologies, the engines driving the digitization of electronics.
Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, the company's businesses also include
materials and controls, educational and productivity solutions, and digital
imaging. The company has manufacturing or sales operations in more than
25 countries.
Texas Instruments is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol
TXN. More information is located on the World Wide Web at www.ti.com.
For more information: Texas Instruments Inc. Semiconductor Group SC-99050
Literature Response Center P.O. Box 172228 Denver, CO 80217 1-800-477-8924,
ext. DSP2787U
About QDesign
QDesign Corporation has been delivering state-of-the art audio solutions
to the broadcast and new media industries since 1995. The Company introduced
the world's first MPEG-2 stereo compression software in October 1996,
making available for the first time, high-quality, high-performance MPEG
sound to all broadcast and studio professionals. In January 1998, QDesign
launched the QDesign Music Codec as the Internet audio solution for QuickTime
3, bringing to audio and multimedia professionals "the Best Audio" product
of 1999 according to New Media Magazine. Last month, the Company announced
its own implementation of MP3, the most popular format for on-line music
download. QDesign's codec technologies appear in hardware processors,
digital audio production, automation and distribution systems as well
as professional and consumer multimedia software
Contact:
QDesign Corporation
media@qdesign.com
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