CEVA, Inc. (NASDAQ:CEVA), the leading licensor of wireless connectivity and smart sensing technologies, together with Beken Corporation, a key player in wireless communication solutions, and VisiSonics, the technology leader in 3D spatial audio technologies, today announced the availability of a complete 3D audio reference design for the rapid deployment of headsets and True Wireless Stereo (TWS) earbuds supporting spatial audio for use in gaming, multimedia and conferencing.
The reference design leverages Beken's BK3288X Bluetooth Audio SoC series featuring the CEVA-X2 Audio DSP running VisiSonics' RealSpace® 3D audio software, together with CEVA's MotionEngine™ Hear head tracking algorithms. This highly-optimized hardware plus software solution offers OEMs and ODMs a cost-effective, ready-to-deploy SoC with best-in-class performance, using any audio encoding format, to introduce best-in-class 3D audio hearing experience for VR, AR and the new generation of motion-aware earbuds. The single chip-based reference design provides a self-sufficient 3D audio solution, fully residing on the headset side, eliminating the need for a 3D audio rendering engine on the host device, which also enables a lower latency design.
"We are pleased to partner with CEVA and Beken to create a reference design that includes our industry-leading RealSpace 3D Audio technology," said Dr. Ramani Duraiswami, CEO, VisiSonics. "Our joint reference design offers consumer electronics OEMs and ODMs a complete hardware and software solution to add 3D spatial audio to their product line of headsets and TWS earbuds."
"Over the past decade, we have been at the forefront of the wireless audio revolution, powering hundreds of millions of Bluetooth-enabled audio devices," said Weifeng Wang, VP of Engineering, Beken Corporation. "Spatial audio brings the wireless audio user experience to the next level and we're pleased to partner with CEVA and VisiSonics to make it easy for our customers to leverage this exciting new technology in a cost-effective, power-efficient turnkey offering. We look forward to see the innovative use cases that the mass market adoption of spatial audio will drive for the audio, gaming and AR/VR industries."
"Spatial audio is an incredibly hot market right now, as the Android and PC ecosystems look to build on the industry momentum behind its use in music and gaming to create immersive audio experiences," said Moshe Sheier, Vice President of Marketing at CEVA. "Our collaboration with Beken and VisiSonics aims to help OEMs and ODMs address this burgeoning market with a fully-featured, self-sufficient turnkey solution for spatial audio that can be rapidly deployed in headsets and earbuds."
