Sonaptic Develops 3D Audio Standard for mobile phones

Its involvement and support for developing this new standard for multimedia and 3D audio on mobile phones and convergence handsets using Java Sonaptic were recommended as participants in the Expert Group by Vodafone (Newbury, England) and Sun Microsystems and played a major role in the development of the audio portion of this standard within the Java Community Process in tandem with Nokia  and Ericsson a testimony to Sonaptic’s acknowledged leadership in 3D positional audio for mobile devices.

Sonaptic’s 3D Audio Engine fully supports the 3D audio and music capabilities defined in the JSR-234 Advanced Multimedia Supplements API Final Release, announced by Sun Microsystems yesterday. The Sonaptic 3D Audio Engine is currently licensed and shipping in mobile phones from NEC Fujitsu and Mitsubishi  and will soon be available from a still to be announced fourth vendor.

The JSR-234 Advanced Multimedia Supplements API enables mobile devices to access a full range of multimedia technologies through a standardized Java API, including camera, tuner, image manipulation, and the 3D positional audio and music capabilities as delivered by Sonaptic’s advanced technology.

JSR-234 will allow game developers and studios to take advantage of 3D sound technology for a fully immersive experience. The standard allows games or other content to easily support the full range of Java-enabled mobile devices without forcing the developer to program for a specific model or chipset.

Using Sonaptic’s 3D Positional Audio technology, an application has realtime control of multiple sound channels positioned and moving dynamically around the user, providing an immersive, 3-dimensional sound environment (as opposed to the stereo expansion features typically found on low-end consumer devices). This allows for amazing games effects and extends the game play area outside of the relatively small screen size of the mobile device. Sonaptic’s technology works equally well on both stereo headsets and on stereo microspeakers built into the device. Sonaptic’s technology is portable and has been especially crafted for the low-power, low-resource requirements of the mobile device environment. It is ideally suited for use on mobile phones, personal video and music players, PDAs and gaming platforms.

Sonaptic recently presented a paper entitled ‘3D Audio for Mobile Devices via Java’ describing the specification at the 118th AES Conference in Barcelona, together with other Expert Group members Nokia and Ericsson.

Handset vendors supporting JSR-234 as part of the initial Expert Group include:

• Ericsson Mobile Platforms (Lund, Sweden)

• Motorola® (Schaumberg, IL)

• Nokia Corporation (Helsinki, Finland)

• Sharp® Labs of America (Camas, WA)

• Siemens® AG (Munich, Germany)

There are already an estimated 600 million Java-enabled mobile devices currently deployed worldwide, and it is expected that JSR-234 will also form an important part of the Mobile Service Architecture (MSA) in providing a common platform for developers of Mobile Java applications under J2ME™ for many years to come.

“We are very privileged to have participated in the development of the audio portions of this breakthrough API alongside mobile industry leaders Nokia and Ericsson," said David Monteith, Sonaptic’s Managing Director and co-founder. “Our history in the development of 3D audio technologies for the mobile industry and the deep background of our team in the game console and PC sound card industries brought a wealth of expertise to the development process. We will continue to work with the Expert Group members to develop JSR-234 into a strong platform for developers of advanced 3D games and other applications as well as continuing to enhance our 3D Audio Engine to take full advantage of revisions and new capabilities of the standard."

More information on the Java Community Process^SM (JCP^SM), JSR-234 and MSA can be found on the JCP website at www.jcp.org