CES 2020 - Dirac and NXP announce collaboration

By equipping NXP's i.MX 8M family of chipsets with Dirac’s digital audio platform, OEMs will be able to enable their devices with maximised, immersive, and adaptive sound across their complete range of products.

Dirac's digital audio platform includes both Dirac digital audio solutions and the Dirac suite of tuning tools. The company's digital audio solutions are selected by the OEM to customise the product’s sound experience while the tuning tools both ensure consistent sound quality across the entire product line and allow the OEM to adjust the sound experience based on brand preferences.

The Dirac-enabled NXP chipsets are intended for a new generation of smart speakers and soundbars that look to prioritise high-quality sound, in addition to home theater receivers, automobiles, and more.

“NXP has strong relationships with category-leading brands in some of the most dynamic consumer market segments,” said Mathias Johansson, Dirac’s co-founder and CEO. “By teaming up with NXP, Dirac has accelerated its growth in the smart speaker and soundbar channels and is now uniquely positioned to redefine these growing markets by enabling smaller products with a level of sound that could once only be delivered through much larger devices.”

Through this collaboration, complete product lines can now be easily outfitted with a sound experience which can be customised using Dirac’s tuning tools to fit their brand style and ensure consistency – all without the OEM developing any of its own software or writing its own code - and so speeding time-to-market.

“The consumer market is demanding higher quality audio across the entire product spectrum, including smart speakers and soundbars,” said Martyn Humphries, vice president and general manager, i.MX applications processor for consumer and industrial for NXP. “Collaborating with Dirac allows NXP to offer an advanced audio solution that meets the industry’s rising standards and makes it much easier for our manufacturer customers to enable their products with a premium sound experience, without adding any development costs.”

When customising their chipset, manufacturers will be able to choose from a variety of Dirac solutions, such as speaker optimisation, bass management, bass enhancement, room correction and immersive audio solutions. The patented algorithms are accessed and enabled through Dirac’s tuning tools.

The new NXP chipset provides manufacturers with the flexibility to develop distinct families of audio products.