Speed ​​is everything! ADI helps Damson Global bring new wireless surround sound system to market quickly

Designing a system that can fully realize the 3D audio capabilities of Dolby Atmos is difficult enough, and implementing it in a wireless architecture adds further technical complexity.

Damson Global chose to work with Analog Devices to implement Dolby Atmos in its new S-Series products. This article describes the S-Series development project and tells the story of the successful collaboration between Analog Devices’ audio processing experts and Damson Global’s world-class audio system designers (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Damson Global’s compact wireless S-Series features the Dolby Atmos 3D audio codec.

Based in York, UK, Damson Global targets the high-end market for mainstream hi-fi and home theater products. Its products are designed to appeal to consumers who seek superior sound quality because they cannot accept the sound quality of the built-in speakers in flat-screen TVs. Although the price of Damson Global's high-quality sound products is not cheap, it is affordable for audiophiles who have money.

Dolby Atmos is extremely attractive to this high-end market. While previous generations of surround sound technologies, such as 5.1-channel systems and Dolby Audio™, provided a compelling 2D surround soundscape, Dolby Atmos adds a third dimension, filling the audio space above and around the viewer with perfectly synchronized channels. Now, bullets whiz by and over the viewer's ears during a battle scene in a war movie. The experience is more immersive and thrilling than with any previous home theater technology.

Damson Global's idea is to implement Dolby Atmos through a modular wireless surround sound configuration. In the S-Series, users can add 2 to 14 rear speakers to the front soundbar and subwoofer.

Damson Global faced two major technical challenges with this design:

These considerations, along with the need for fast time to market, led Damson Global to partner with Analog Devices, a company that provides a broad range of audio solutions for a broad range of electronics market segments, including consumer, automotive, professional audio, industrial, military, and aerospace.

Figure 2. Functional block diagram of the ADI dual-SHARC core ADSP-21584 digital signal processor.

ADI provides comprehensive support, including components, middleware, software, reference designs, tools and expertise to help customers realize professional and consumer audio designs. In this successful case of Damson Global, it is mainly due to the fact that it can be based on ADI's existing Dolby Atmos system demonstration prototype, which uses the dual-core SHARC+ digital signal processor ADSP-21584. The Dolby Atmos system reference design was realized by a world-class team of audio signal processing experts from ADI, who will also support customers' solution implementation.

In addition, a comprehensive and intuitive suite of SHARC family DSP-specific tools is available to help design engineers accelerate their development cycles when using SHARC® core-based DSPs. These tools include:

These software tools helped Damson Global engineers configure the operation of the ADSP-21584 to meet the requirements of the S-Series products. However, Dolby Atmos is a completely new codec, more complex than any previous surround sound technology, including previous Dolby products such as Dolby Audio or Dolby Digital+. Therefore, although Damson Global engineers are experts in audio electronics design, strong support from ADI's audio processing engineers was also crucial to help Damson Global significantly reduce the development time of this complex technology product.

Development of the S-Series was done in parallel by two Damson Global teams to implement the architecture of the S-Series products. The basic control unit is partitioned between wireless communication functions (implemented via a radio system on a chip (SoC)) and audio processing functions (Dolby Atmos codec is performed on an Analog Devices ADSP-21584 (see Figure 2)). This meant that one development team at Damson Global could focus on the high-frequency radio system design. This system must provide very high data rates to deliver the Dolby Atmos audio signal to each speaker with very low latency.

Another development team, supported by ADI audio processing experts, also implemented Dolby Atmos on the ADSP-21584. For radio systems, speed and latency are both important parameters for audio processing systems.

Engineers at Damson Global worked with audio processing experts at Analog Devices on a highly successful development project that brought the S Series to market in early 2018, receiving positive reviews from numerous audiophile product reviewers and users.

Part of the praise is for the ADSP-21584's high performance, which achieves latency targets with a wide margin: the S-Series has latency below 20 milliseconds while delivering a fully immersive 3D audio experience.

High praise from the most influential judges – S-Series customers. More importantly, Damson Global achieved its goal to bring this premium surround sound product to market before other Dolby Atmos-based wireless products are available, giving Damson Global a unique sales advantage that will allow it to succeed in today’s competitive market.