Fremont, CA. ESS Technology Inc. today introduced three new devices to its AudioDrive™ series of single-chip audio parts. The new chips are targeted for three distinct OEM market segments: PC motherboard (the ES1869), PC add-in card (ES1887) and PC notebook (ES1879).

All three devices comply with the Microsoft AC’97 standard. Features include 16 bit CD-quality, full duplex stereo sound, PC audio and games support in Sound Blaster™ and Sound Blaster Pro™ modes, FM music synthesis and hardware volume control. They also include a broadside ISA bus interface, advanced power management modes, software addressable selections for Plug and Play (PnP), and support for interfaces to various related devices, including a MIDI synthesizer, a DSP processor and an external wavetable music synthesizer.

Additionally, the ES1869 and ES 1879 include Spatializer 3D audio (simulating a 3D soundstage from two stereo speakers); Enhanced Telegaming Architecture (enables multiple-stream mixed audio playback of WAV, MIDI and FM synthesized audio); and a new high fidelity analog front end.

A U.S. patent has been issued to one Mark Glatzer for “an device for use with a conventional crab trap.” The idea is, you encase an audio transducer in a material that makes it look like yummy crab food, stick it in your crab trap, hook it up to an amp and speakers, then sit back and listen. Hey presto, if a crab climbs into the trap, you’ll be the first to know!

Stay alert, though: apparently you have to trigger the trap door manually with a remote trigger line, when you hear your victim. Seems to me you could activate the trigger with audio, too… but maybe that’ll be Mark’s next patent.

If you’re keen to know more, it’s Patent No. 5555666, issued Sept.17, 1996.

Meanwhile, at the upper end of the audio card spectrum… Communication Automation & Control Inc. is offering the SB32C S-Bus telephony board, with either a T1 or E1 interface onboard. The card can carry two Lucent Technologies DSP32C DSPs, and it can also provide up to four CD-quality audio I/O channels and 1 Mbyte of zero-wait-state SRAM.

The minimum configuration of the SB32C features a peak performance of 37 million floating-point operations per second (Mflops), one stereo codec, and 512 Kbytes of private SRAM. With a T1 interface, this one goes for $2,750 (US). The dual-processor version features a peak performance of 74 Mflops, two stereo codecs, and 512 Kbytes of SRAM per DSP.

upertino, CA. The audio-on-demand market continues to heat up. A month ago, Progressive Networks introduced RealAudio Player Plus software that allows web surfers to tune into personalized audio content on the net as if scanning favorite stations with a radio receiver. Now, Audio Highway aims to go one better by delivering personalized audio content to listeners on the go.

Audio Highway yesterday announced the Listen Up™ player, a small, portable device which delivers personalized audio content to “information-hungry, on-the-go consumers.”

“With a Listen Up Player and an Internet account, consumers will be able to peruse and select audio versions of news, general information, entertainment, education, books and business selections for storage and replay through their player,” says Nathan Schulhof, President and CEO of Audio Highway. “Coupled with the Internet, Listen Up gives consumers the freedom to select the audio content they want to hear and a mechanism to hear it when and where they want to.”

The Listen Up Player is just out of final design. The company says it will retail at $299 (US). It is similar in size to a typical pager, approximately 4 x 2 x 1.5 inches, and it weighs less than four ounces. Sound is delivered via headsets or through transmission to an automobile or home stereo system.

Audio Highway will initially store audio selections on its web servers, where Listen Up customers will be able to view and select personalized audio selections. Once chosen, audio selections will be delivered to the hard drive of a consumer’s personal computer, then transferred to a Listen Up player via a pass-through parallel port.

The Listen Up player that Audio Highway plans to ship in early 1997 will store up to one full hour of audio content in internal memory. It will also include a Listen Up docking station, headphones, AudioWiz™ system software, and a car adapter. It will run for three months on two AAA penlight batteries.

“We will begin national field testing of the Listen Up Player this November,” Schulhof said. “We will formally introduce Listen Up, Audio Highway and its other products and services at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 1997 in Las Vegas. We plan to begin shipments of Listen Up players that same quarter.”

At launch, all Audio Highway content is going to be ad-supported, and delivered free of charge to consumers. For every hour of selected audio content, consumers will receive three minutes of audio advertising messages, in six 30-second spots.

Audio Highway has already signed agreements with a number of media companies to provide a wide selection of continually-updated audio content to its customers. Among the initial content choices available to Listen Up consumers will be tens of thousands of selections ranging from news, books, self- improvement programs, magazine articles, radio and television programs and movie reviews.

Content providers taking part in the November trials of production units include Associated Press, Berlitz, CMP Media, SyberVision, Harper Audio, Newsweek, PR Newswire and Time-Warner Audio Books, among others.

Audio Highway customers will also be able to forward email messages to their Listen Up players. Audio Highway software will be available to convert text email messages into electronic speech for future playback in a mobile environment. As a mobile digital recording device, Listen Up players will also allow consumers to record messages that can be forwarded to individuals with email accounts for future playback through another Listen Up player or a multimedia PC.