Atmel Launches Complete Digital Audio Platform for Consumer Applications

Atmel Corporation, a leading manufacturer of microcontrollers and touch solutions, announced the launch of a comprehensive digital audio platform for consumer, automotive and industrial applications. The Atmel digital audio platform provides a comprehensive hardware and firmware solution for OEMs of audio devices and mobile accessories, greatly simplifying the task of designing high-quality digital audio devices. This new digital audio platform is implemented using the Atmel AVR UC3 microcontroller and is tailored for audio applications such as smartphones and media player docking stations.

The digital audio platform integrates a dedicated microcontroller, an evaluation tool suite and firmware IP. The firmware IP includes a variety of control and streaming interfaces for popular smartphones and portable media players with MP3, WMA and AAC decoders to allow designers to decode compressed music files; the platform also includes a USB protocol stack and a comprehensive file system that allows designers to find mass storage devices such as USB flash drives or SD cards. The new platform's firmware IP uses a ready-to-go commercial licensing model that allows designers to keep their firmware code confidential, unlike many current audio license agreements that require the firmware code to be open. The digital audio platform is suitable for applications such as docking stations, USB mass storage, SD card playback, car audio, USB speakers, microphones and various voice and music devices. Other applications include mobile accessories (accessories that connect to smartphones or tablets) using the same basic technology.

This digital audio platform takes advantage of Atmel's AVR UC3 microcontrollers and provides designers with a system that offers the highest performance and lowest power. The AVR UC3 microcontrollers also support the Atmel QTouch® software library, making it easy to implement stylish and unique capacitive touch buttons, slider controls and dial user interfaces.

"In the past, designing digital audio applications has been a complex and daunting task, requiring the discovery of the required firmware IP, licensing it and then integrating it into a working application," said Ingar Fredriksen, senior director of AVR products at Atmel. "Atmel's digital audio platform provides an 'out-of-the-box solution' that enables today's audio application developers to complete the core design with minimal engineering effort."

To help designers accelerate audio application development, the digital audio platform also comes with an evaluation kit (EVK). This kit includes an evaluation board with an Atmel AVR microcontroller and source code that can be downloaded free of charge.