TI's new audio ADC enables low-distortion recording in noisy environments

Engineers can now achieve 120dB of dynamic range for capturing clear, high-fidelity speech in smart home applications

Texas Instruments (TI) has introduced a new audio analog-to-digital converter (ADC) that can capture clear speech at four times the distance of similar products in the industry. The TLV320ADC5140 is the industry's smallest four-channel audio ADC with equivalent performance. It is one of three new Burr-Brown™ audio ADC products launched by TI and can achieve low-distortion recording in noisy environments and far-field high-fidelity recording in any environment.

Smart home systems face the challenge of far-field audio acquisition. Existing smart home systems have difficulty acquiring and understanding voice commands in noisy environments due to a limited number of microphones and limited signal processing capabilities. The TLV320ADC5140 can help engineers meet this challenge by improving audio acquisition across rooms and enhancing the recognition of hard-to-capture voice commands in applications such as high-end smart speakers, sound bars, wireless speakers, HDTVs, IP network cameras, teleconferencing systems and smart home appliances. This ADC expands TI Burr-Brown's portfolio of premium audio devices (including high-performance Class-D amplifiers, data converters and operational amplifiers), and can also help engineers save system design costs by reducing the number of microphones in the array.

Key features and benefits of the TLV320ADC5140

Leverage beamforming systems to capture clear audio in any environment: The TLV320ADC5140 features a built-in 120dB dynamic range enhancer (DRE). At the system level, the DRE solution enhances low-volume audio signals while maintaining low-distortion recordings even when very close to the speaker output. DRE also improves far-field high-fidelity recordings in all environments.

Premium microphones provide high-quality voice compatibility: The TLV320ADC5140 is the first ADC to fully support the latest high signal-to-noise ratio microphones with over 106dB dynamic range.

Leading-edge integration enables versatile system designs: The TLV320ADC5140 supports simultaneous sampling of up to four analog channels or eight digital channels (or a combination) of microphone inputs, ensuring system flexibility, and also provides programmable features such as gain and phase calibration to equalize microphone array mismatches. Other features includeProgrammable gain amplifier , high-pass filter, channel mixing, and linear phase or ultra-low latency filters.

Small size and low system power consumption: The built-in functions of the TLV320ADC5140 can help engineers offload the burden of digital signal processing tasks, thereby reducing the design size without sacrificing system reliability. At 48kHz, the power consumption per channel is only 9.5mW.

Packaging and Availability

The TLV320ADC5140 is available now in the TI store in a 4-mm x 4-mm, 24-pin WQFN package. The TLV320ADC5140 4-channel 768kHz TI Burr-Brown audio ADC evaluation module ADC5140EVM-PDK is also available in limited quantities.