ARC® SONIC FOCUS TECHNOLOGY
VIRTUAL BASS™
Virtual Bass™ | Real Boom
ARC International Virtual Bass audio enrichment technology enables electronic companies to be more competitive and lower manufacturing costs while providing a more compelling multimedia experience to consumers using a wide range of home entertainment and portable devices.
Virtual Bass is part of ARC's silicon-to-sound solution that delivers a deep rich bass response on existing speakers or headphones thereby eliminating the need to add subwoofers or other costly audio components. This provides OEMs with up to $3 million in manufacturing cost savings over the life of a product and when combined with the low power ARC® Sound Subsystem a 100-hour audio playback solution for portable devices. Semiconductor vendors also benefit by realizing up to $1 million savings in silicon costs over the life of their system-on-chip (SoC) product development.
ARC Virtual Bass Technology
Virtual Bass technology is part of ARC’s Sonic Focus™ audio enrichment technology suite. When implemented on the ARC Sound Subsystem, it offers a complete solution that lowers their manufacturing cost while producing an enhanced listening experience. The solution includes the entire breath of ARC's product offerings:
- The underlying silicon solution that cuts chip size and lowers power consumption
- The complete set of software to provide playback of any digital music format
- All the tools needed to develop the chip solution
- The complete Sonic Focus audio enrichment technology suite
The vast majority of small speakers typical of today’s mobile phones and PCs have limited or non-existent bass response in the frequency range below 180 Hz. The result is a thin sound that does not convey the emotion of a plucked bass string or the impact of a movie explosion. Often the results are unwanted distortion, washed out solo instruments and vocals, and lost articulation of movie dialog. Virtual Bass optimizes a product’s bass rendering capabilities, taking into account the analog to digital converter, amplifier, speaker cavity, and speaker driver, thus resulting in audio that more accurately reflects the original performance without adding artificial signals or muffling voice articulation and audio clarity.
Virtual Bass is part of a suite of audio enrichment software from ARC that:
- Converts flat and lifeless digitized audio into rich sound for playback of music and movies
- Restores the realism and emotion of the original performance
- Transforms stereo audio into natural surround sound using existing speakers or headphones
How Virtual Bass Compares with Alternatives
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Virtual Bass
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Other Techniques
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Adds bass information without compromising voice integrity or detail
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Limits voice articulation and muffles audio clarity while boosting bass with equalization
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Magnifies existing bass information already in the audio signal
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Based on artificial signals such as square or triangle waves to simulate bass
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Extends perceived bass response
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Significantly alters the tonality, distorting the sound characteristics
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System View of Virtual Bass
ARC Sound Subsystem
 Virtual Bass is software that executes on the ARC Sound Subsystem or other hardware platform. It processes digital audio from an audio decoder and outputs the enriched digital file to a digital-to-analog converter and through an amplifier to a speaker or earphones.
Virtual Bass Benefits
- Value to OEMs
- EnableOEM to offer customers good, better, and best solutions
- Lowers BoM costs up to $3 Million
- Enables OEM to provide portable devices with extended playtime
- Value to Chip Suppliers
- Integrated with low power 32-bit ARC® platform
- Reduced silicon area lowers chip cost up to $1 Million
- Offer customers chips that extends battery life up to 100 hours
- Value to Listeners
- Breathes life into digital music files
- Warm, rich bass sound on CE devices with small speakers
- Up to 100 hours of playback time on portable devices
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