The chip technology that showcases the charm of the voice bully
Time:2023-04-04
Views:1109
The location distribution of any speaker in a specific room can significantly affect the sound quality of the system, so establishing a home theater system is never an easy task, especially when using high-end equipment. Even if consumers purchase a relatively simple "Home Theater Speaker (HiTB)" system, they still need to install, connect, and configure multiple speakers correctly to truly achieve the best surround sound effect.
In many cases, configuring a home audio system is too complex for consumers and requires skilled technicians to complete it. The placement and orientation of speakers must be correct. Speaker cables need to be routed inside walls or under carpets, and equipment needs to be carefully configured to accommodate room irregularities, such as furniture, curtains, non-standard speaker placement, and listening locations. In most households, the main reason for the unsatisfactory surround sound effect is actually simply due to improper installation.
Soundbar and sound projector represent the highest level of home theater audio system, which can achieve immersive surround sound, and avoid many problems caused by installing multiple speakers. "Soundmaster" derives its name from its delicate and compact rod-shaped shape. Low end products cost less than $200, while high-end products cost more than $1000. Its width is roughly similar to that of a flat panel display, and its height is usually only a few inches, which can be directly placed under the monitor.
This type of exquisite and compact system truly achieves high integration of the entire home theater, including A/V receivers, speakers, and even DVD players, in a single device. This design can greatly simplify installation work by simply turning on the power and connecting a signal cable to the TV. In addition, with prior knowledge of the characteristics of the speakers used in the system, similar to HTiB, developers can preprocess and configure each specific speaker, not only achieving better sound effects, but also significantly reducing system costs. Compared to HTiB, Sound Blaster also has a unique advantage, which is that it can increase the control level to achieve better overall surround sound effect while knowing the relative position of the speaker driver.
The only difficulty that these technological advancements need to overcome is the increasing complexity of the system, as designers constantly integrate components and optimize their coordination. However, if highly integrated System on Chip (SoC) audio processor technology and design tools can be utilized to avoid algorithm development and deployment, designers can not only significantly simplify the device development process, but also provide the highest quality audio at specific price points.
The Power of Virtualization
The biggest advantage of Sound Blaster and Speakers is that it avoids the trouble of installing multiple speakers. Although all speakers are placed in front of the audience, advanced signal processing algorithms and virtualization technology can still simulate the sound field of multiple speakers placed in various directions of the room, bringing an immersive feeling. The final result is the sound effect that can only be achieved with a well positioned multi-channel speaker system using a single speaker box. In higher-end systems, using advanced room correction techniques and equalization algorithms can further expand the range of optimal listening phonemes (optimal listening positions) and compensate for non ideal room acoustic characteristics, resulting in a more exciting listening experience.
Although some configuration work is still required, this process basically requires no consumer involvement. For some systems, the content of configuration work is to manually select the general room shape and size before starting the system. Other systems that use more advanced room correction technology only require consumers to place a microphone near the ideal listening location in the room and perform simple one-time settings. After that, the system will automatically configure.
Virtualization is not a new technology, it has been around for over 15 years. In the past, Sound Blaster required multiple digital signal processors (DSPs) to perform decoding, equalization, virtualization, and other sound effects functions. Due to the latest advancements in DSP technology, we can implement high-quality virtualization through a single chip, making the prices of sound amplifiers and speakers more affordable. Unlike general-purpose DSP, these devices are highly efficient audio SoC solutions that are carefully optimized for audio applications, integrating a large number of critical analog and digital components required to further reduce costs. In addition, although the use of DSP for design in the past required programming knowledge or professional experience, with the continuous development of advanced software development tools in recent years, the requirements for programming knowledge or professional experience have become increasingly low, or even completely unnecessary in some cases.
Product differentiation
In addition to traditional input and output support quantities, companies can achieve differentiation between sound amplifiers and speaker products through various channels. Given that lower end speakers typically focus on minimizing costs, these products include two to six fixed speaker drivers, virtualization, and speaker equalization circuits, providing a variety of selectable audio effects. Popular sound effects include bass effects that improve the roundness and depth of the sound; "Late night listening mode" to improve clarity at low volume. Similarly, a new generation of "intelligent volume control" algorithms is emerging. Its main purpose is to program the volume changes of movies, news, and advertising programs to enhance the listening experience. For example, in traditional situations, viewers/listeners are "forced" to constantly adjust the volume up and down based on different programs to achieve appropriate sound levels. In addition, Sound Blaster also supports pure music features such as enhanced MP3 playback. This feature can expand the frequency range of highly compressed audio streams, making playback sound on high-quality speakers closer to the original CD.
In addition, high-end speakers can support up to 40 speaker drivers and more diverse sound effects, such as fully automated configuration and advanced room correction, to adapt to the unique acoustic characteristics of a room.
The number of speaker drivers supported by the speakers has an impact on the expected sound quality. For example, a sound bully equipped with four speaker drivers can produce more ideal surround sound than a sound bully equipped with two speaker drivers. Generally speaking, systems with less than five speaker drivers will use neuroacoustic virtualization technology to create a comprehensive three-dimensional sound field. Neuroacoustic virtualization can emit different information from different speakers at different times, thus virtualizing a wide sound field. Due to the use of fewer speaker drivers, neuroacoustic virtualization can be considered a low-cost solution for lower end speakers.
Another technology that can provide virtual surround sound is the use of mechanical virtualization, also known as beam forming. High-end sound tyrants typically use this technology because they require more speaker drivers - 40 or more - to create virtual surround sound effects. Unlike neuroacoustics, which hallucinates the ear and makes the mind feel that sound comes from different directions, mechanical virtualization allows sound waves to be reflected in the room to truly create a sound field surrounding the listener.
Modern SoC integration technology highly integrates analog and digital components, as well as all necessary audio peripherals, making it possible for a single processor to provide core power for the entire Sound Blaster system. For lower end devices, the adoption of SoC can significantly reduce design complexity and accelerate the product launch process, as collaboration between components has been optimized.
It is particularly worth mentioning that designers can select independent DSPs from a range of pin compatible and software compatible DSP products based on cost performance, then perform simple combinations of various pin compatible DSPs on a printed circuit board (PCB), and load various features supported by the software to develop various cost-effective Sound Blaster product lines. For example, the DA7xx series audio DSP from Texas Instruments (TI) consists of three types of DSP that are compatible with software and are each at a different price and performance level.
In situations where the price is low and the performance requirements are not high, it is possible to make high-value sound masters only support Dolby and DTS 5.1 decoding and virtualization; Midrange products can increase support for room balancing, bass enhancement, and other audio post-processing; High definition (HD) audio decoders compatible with Blu-ray players can be added to high-end products. All of these can be achieved through DSP PCM design
For lower end Sonic products, price and speed to market are the most important issues. Designers can choose highly integrated SoC devices, such as TI‘s TAS3x processor family. The easy-to-use "drag and drop" development software that comes with this processor family can significantly reduce system complexity, shorten development time, and reduce development costs. Product differentiation and performance optimization can be realized through software, and hardware platform can be reused by multiple products.
In each case, developers can achieve differentiation through the specific features supported rather than the implementation process. This means that existing algorithms or specialized audio system development tools should be used instead of manually optimizing DSP code to implement standard audio functions. In this way, further product differentiation will focus on optimizing the sound effect of specific speakers by expanding the sound range and improving the sound quality, rather than just letting the speakers play back the audio.
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