Cadence at CES 2015: Enabling Surreal Surround Sound Audio

LAS VEGAS—In the cacophony of CES, it’s refreshing to find an escape. I found mine in a set of headphones slipped over my ears.

Standing in the Cadence booth chatting with Yipeng Liu, with Cadence audio product marketing,  I’m listening to audio using DTS  Headphone:X technology.

As Liu said, “hearing is believing.” If you close your eyes, you find yourself in a room with the audio. It’s a strange experience, but an amazing advance in audio processing that’s the latest in a long relationship between DTS and Cadence Tensilica.

The DTS algorithm is processed by a Cadence Tensilica HiFi 3 DSP, running—in the case of the demonstration—on a Xilinx FPGA board with two HiFi 3 cores.

The astonishing part about the demo is listening to the audio using ordinary headphones. The processing and post-processing delivers a 7.1 home theater-quality surround sound experience. What’s more, HiFi’s low-energy benefits mean the technology can be designed into mobile applications, according to Liu.

Here’s Liu discussing the technology:

Brian Fuller

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