Consumer audio trend setter Altec Lansing Technologies is making a hard pitch to capture “mind share” at the Fall’96 COMDEX computing technology exhibition this week. Altec’s focus is on the audio side of the new media convergence that is one of the big movements afoot at the show, which continues throughout the week in Las Vegas.
Convergence in this context means the combination of computing, multimedia, communications, networking, and home appliance technologies, to create new possibilities and impact in home entertainment and leisure activities.
Altec is offering its spin on new media technology with a multimedia theater presentation called “Sound Matters,” at its booth at The Sands Convention Center. Visitors are invited to explore a number of futuristic interactive computer systems demonstrating DVD-Audio, Dolby Digital Surround™, Internet Audio, and audio connectivity through Universal Serial Bus (USB), Firewire (IEEE-1394 protocol), and RF digital wireless technologies.
“We are announcing nine specific technology initiatives designed to provide advanced audio for emerging technologies,” says Edward Anchel, Altec’s President and CEO. “As a result of these initiatives, computer users will enjoy better quality audio than they have ever heard before because of the array of new technologies and products we will deliver to the computer market.”
A key introduction is a PC speaker system that Altec says will be the market’s first USB audio peripheral. Universal System Bus changes the computer audio environment by integrating speaker system functions with the host PC’s internal audio circuitry, allowing direct digital audio streaming to the speakers.
Altec’s first USB speaker system will include proprietary firmware and software, along with an Intel 80930AE chip. The software will function as a user-friendly control interface for the PC audio environment. The system will support multichannel sound streaming that will have applications for communications and video conferencing, as well as for music and gaming audio.
Altec Lansing has also announced that it will develop multichannel direct streaming audio to its speaker systems via the even speedier and higher-bandwidth “Firewire” protocol, also known as IEEE-1394.
Another of Altec’s new initiatives showcased at COMDEX demonstrates discrete multichannel audio delivered by DVD (Digital Versatile Disc). The demonstration focuses on Dolby® Digital Surround (AC3), encoded as six discrete channels, and streamed as compressed digital data to Altec’s USB speaker system. Altec will implement a system of this kind for home theatre applications.
The third key area of Altec Lansing’s COMDEX roll-out introduces high-quality wireless audio transmission for use with computers and home theater systems. The technology involves proprietary compression algorithms and modulation techniques to enable the delivery of audio via spread-spectrum digital RF transmission.
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