San Diego, CA. American Technology Corp. (ATC) is reporting progress in the development and enhancement of its innovative new speakerless sound reproduction technology.

ATC’s HyperSonic Sound™ (HSS) technology was invented by Elwood Norris. According to Norris, demonstrations at the company’s lab over the past few weeks have been getting rave reviews from industry insiders. “The most frequent reaction from the hundreds of people who have experienced HSS is one of astonishment,” says Norris.

“HSS is an entirely new method of sound reproduction,” he continues. “Sound is literally generated in air directly, without the need for loudspeakers, by inaudible ultrasonic waves that interact in space to produce audible sound. In the past, vaguely similar methods have been attempted, but always without success. we are demonstrating previously unknown techniques to industry experts who agree that what we have is fundamentally new.”

ATC’s proprietary patent-pending technology is compatible with existing audio recording and broadcasting techniques. It uses none of the elements of traditional loudspeakers, and the company claims that sound quality is no longer tied to speaker size. ATC also claims to have demonstrated the ability to manipulate the apparent point source of sound using HSS.

“We plan to take the HyperSonic Sound demonstration on the road during October to introduce the HSS experience as a compelling alternative to conventional loudspeakers,” commented Robert Putnam, President and CEO of ATC.

“In addition to home and mobile systems, we believe HSS has applications in multimedia, cinema, stadiums, concert halls, telephone headsets, answering machines, as well as a growing list of specialty niche applications. We have been overwhelmed by the initial industry response and are diligently proceeding with our exploitation strategy.”

Cupertino, CA. Apple Computer, Inc. continues its push into the Internet audio domain (see previous story on Apple’s VCD “Virtual CD” technology introduction) with aggressive support of a new live audio streaming system.

Apple is partnering with Telos Systems to deliver Audioactive™ Internet streaming. Apple plans to debut Audioactive with a live webcast tomorrow (Sept.27) featuring the cranberries and Me’shell Ndegeocello, live from Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, CA. (6:00pm PST, 9:00pm EST).

Apple plans to deliver all of its future live webcasts in Audioactive format, including upcoming dates featuring Black Crowes (Sept.29), The Samples (Sept.30), and The Ugly Americans (Oct.2), all from the Fox Theater in Boulder, CO. Upcoming performances from the Strand Theater in Providence, RI are expected to be announced at a later date.

Audioactive is designed for live webcasting, rather than pre-recorded audio-on-demand materials. It is fully compatible with Macromedia’s Shockwave™ plug-in and Shockwave audio standard, so that millions of web surfers who already use Shockwave can automatically receive live Audioactive broadcasts. For audio that is not streamed live, tools like Macromedia’s Director™ can provide the editing, processing, and compression necessary for creating audio files.

“I think people are going to be blown away when they hear this,” says Steve Church, President of Telos Systems. “We’re going to demonstrate that audio on the Internet can have quality that rivals traditional broadcasting.”

Telos plans to implement the IP Multicast standard in Audioactive. Apple has already announced IP Multicast support in its QuickTime TV environment, which sends live audio and video over intranets (local-area IP networks), and potentially the Internet. Many network implementation experts consider IP Multicast to be the best near-term hope for solving the bandwidth problems inherent in moving audio and video broadcast media to the web.

The Telos Server System for Audioactive is implemented on Apple’s Network Server 700 running under AIX. The key hardware component enabling live audio streaming is the Telos Netcoder.

Netcoder is a dedicated hardware-based encoder, which offers much more processing power than systems bound to general-purpose CPUs. A five DSP-chip compression engine performs MPEG-2 layer III bitrate reduction, the most powerful audio method endorsed by the competitive MPEG standards process. On the core compression technology, Telos partnered with the audio and multimedia division of Germany’s Fraunhofer Laboratory, a world leader in pure research in the audio compression field, and the inventor of MPEG layer III.

In the upcoming webcasts, the system will deliver three feeds of increasing quality: one for 28.8 users, which results in better than AM quality audio; one for 56K (single-channel ISDN) users, which offers near FM quality audio; and one for 96K (2-channel ISDN or better) users, which offers near-CD quality audio.

“Apple continues to demonstrate its multimedia leadership on the Internet. We are now in a much improved position to show off our capabilities to music lovers who surf the Internet,” said Steve Franzese, V-P, Interactive Marketing and Online Services for Apple. “We are also pleased to find a technology ally with significant experience and a similar commitment to the music industry.”

Telos Systems is based in Cleveland, OH. The company was the first to apply DSP technologies to audio broadcast products. The Telos range now includes high-fidelity ISDN audio codecs for remote broadcasting, systems for call-in talk shows, and audio processing equipment for FM radio stations.

Pentium PC and Power Mac users are invited to download the free Audioactive player (helper application) in order to listen to the live music webcasts. If you don’t want to wait for the webcasts, you can hear examples of Audioactive streaming right now at the Apple Webcasts site.

Paris, France. Texas Instruments, a leader in digital signal processing technology and chip manufacturing, will host he first European DSP Education and Research Conference, starting tomorrow (Sept.25) in Paris.

The two-day conference will be held at the École Superieure Ingenieurs d’Electrotecnique et d’Electronique (ESIEE) in Paris on Wednesday and Thursday (Sept. 25/26). It will feature papers from 31 universities across Europe in addition to three from TI itself. There will also be two workshop sessions and parallel daily presentations by third-party TI DSP solutions providers.

Scheduled presentations cover subjects including parallel processing, image processing, communications and speech processing, digital control, and noise cancellation. Admission to the conference is free for all members of the academic community.

Sunnyvale, CA. With audio CD demand slowing down throughout the world, Nimbus Manufacturing Inc. is focusing its expansion plans on CD-ROM and DVD capabilities.

Last week, Nimbus announced that sales and profitability for the 2nd quarter of its fiscal year, ending September 30, would be lower than expected. This was largely due to high inventories of audio CD’s at retail outlets, resulting in low fall re-order rates.

Yesterday, Nimbus announced the expansion of the CD replication capability in its Sunnyvale plant. The new CD replication lines provide a capacity of more than 20 million units annually at the Sunnyvale facility, which began producing discs on August 1st.

“Our goal is to become the number one independent CD replicator in the world,” commented Lyndon J. Faulkner, Chairman, Nimbus CD International, Inc. “The added CD capacity in Sunnyvale means we’re one step closer to reaching that goal with a total production capability of over 200 million discs annually worldwide.”

Nimbus will also be introducing DVD manufacturing capability this week at its main manufacturing plant in Charlottesville, VA. “That will make us the first independent CD replicator currently offering a true, full range of optical disc products in the U.S.,” said Faulkner.

“We’re witnessing a large-scale migration to compact disc by the software and entertainment industries,” said David J. Trudel, Executive V-P of North American operations. “The addition of CD replication to our west coast facility completes the critical supply chain demanded by the market.”

Amek Systems and Controls Ltd. has announced the latest outboard module in the System 9098 range of its “by Rupert Neve, the Designer” product line.

The 9098 Dual Compressor/Limiter features a signal path designed throughout by Rupert Neve. It uses the same circuit techniques employed in the 9098 Production Console and other System 9098 devices such as the RNEQ Mic Pre/EQ and RCMA remote-controlled mic amp. However this versatile Compressor/Limiter also retains the character of his classic designs of the late 60’s and early 70’s, notably the 2254.

Digital processing is used in the System 9098 Dual Compressor/Limiter control circuitry, but the audio signal path is a “Virtual Class A” analog design throughout. Very accurate control of the envelope parameters is ensured by the use of a precision RMS converter allied to digital control of the sidechain.

Other key principles of the new unit include extended frequency response and careful attention to the design of the transformer-coupled input and output stages to virtually eliminate RFI and grounding problems.

The System 9098 Compressor/Limiter is a 2U rack-mounting unit designed to complement other units in the System 9098 range. It offers two identical channels of signal processing. The sidechains may be linked for stereo operation. Each channel provides independent control of Compressor and Limiter functions, and they may be used together to create a dual-slope device.

The Compressor section offers adjustment of threshold (-30 to +12dBu), Ratio (1.5:1 to 20:1), attack (0.3mS to 150mS) and release (100mS to 5S). Switches are provided for selection of hard or soft knee and auto-release modes. The Limiter section provides for independent adjustment of threshold (0dBu to +20dBu) and release (50mS to 1S), with two switched attack times.

In accordance with Mr Neve’s traditional designs, each channel incorporates a large illuminated moving-coil VU meter which can be switched to display gain reduction, input or output signal levels or sidechain signal, in external mode. Operation of the Limiter section is indicated by an LED.

All inputs and outputs of the unit, including the sidechain access points, are balanced on rear-panel XLR connectors. The main inputs and outputs use transformers, while the sidechain send and return use Mr. Neve’s well-known TLA (Transformer-Like Amplifier) design.

A unique capability offered by the System 9098 Dual Compressor/Limiter is its Ambience Mode. This innovative feature permits the effective reduction or removal of unwanted background noise or excessive ambience and reverberant fields, during recording, or even afterwards.

Ambience Mode is not simple gating. It actually puts the unit into a different internal configuration and reduces or even removes unwanted signals below the Threshold. Careful adjustment of attack and release controls optimizes the effect. This feature may be used to remove unwanted background noise on field recordings, or to make reverberant recordings sound as if close-mic’d in a dead area.