ARC^® SONIC FOCUS TECHNOLOGY

VIRTUAL BASS^™

Virtual Bass™ | Real Boom

ARC International Virtual Bass audio enrichment technology enables electronic companies to be more competitive and lower manufacturing costs while providing a more compelling multimedia experience to consumers using a wide range of home entertainment and portable devices.

Virtual Bass is part of ARC's silicon-to-sound solution that delivers a deep rich bass response on existing speakers or headphones thereby eliminating the need to add subwoofers or other costly audio components. This provides OEMs with up to $3 million in manufacturing cost savings over the life of a product and when combined with the low power ARC^® Sound Subsystem a 100-hour audio playback solution for portable devices. Semiconductor vendors also benefit by realizing up to $1 million savings in silicon costs over the life of their system-on-chip (SoC) product development.

ARC Virtual Bass Technology

Virtual Bass technology is part of ARC’s Sonic Focus™ audio enrichment technology suite. When implemented on the ARC Sound Subsystem, it offers a complete solution that lowers their manufacturing cost while producing an enhanced listening experience. The solution includes the entire breath of ARC's product offerings:

The underlying silicon solution that cuts chip size and lowers power consumption
The complete set of software to provide playback of any digital music format
All the tools needed to develop the chip solution
The complete Sonic Focus audio enrichment technology suite

The vast majority of small speakers typical of today’s mobile phones and PCs have limited or non-existent bass response in the frequency range below 180 Hz. The result is a thin sound that does not convey the emotion of a plucked bass string or the impact of a movie explosion. Often the results are unwanted distortion, washed out solo instruments and vocals, and lost articulation of movie dialog. Virtual Bass optimizes a product’s bass rendering capabilities, taking into account the analog to digital converter, amplifier, speaker cavity, and speaker driver, thus resulting in audio that more accurately reflects the original performance without adding artificial signals or muffling voice articulation and audio clarity.

Virtual Bass is part of a suite of audio enrichment software from ARC that:

Converts flat and lifeless digitized audio into rich sound for playback of music and movies
Restores the realism and emotion of the original performance
Transforms stereo audio into natural surround sound using existing speakers or headphones

How Virtual Bass Compares with Alternatives

Virtual Bass	Other Techniques
Adds bass information without compromising voice integrity or detail	Limits voice articulation and muffles audio clarity while boosting bass with equalization
Magnifies existing bass information already in the audio signal	Based on artificial signals such as square or triangle waves to simulate bass
Extends perceived bass response	Significantly alters the tonality, distorting the sound characteristics

System View of Virtual Bass

ARC Sound Subsystem
Virtual Bass is software that executes on the ARC Sound Subsystem or other hardware platform. It processes digital audio from an audio decoder and outputs the enriched digital file to a digital-to-analog converter and through an amplifier to a speaker or earphones.