Fabless IC Company Fangtek Chooses Sonic’s MIDI Synthesizer and Regionalized Wavetable for Audio Processors Aimed at Chinese Markets

Boston, MA --- Sonic Network, Inc., a provider of audio synthesizer technology, today announced it has licensed its Embedded Audio Synthesis (EAS) technology to Fangtek Ltd. for use in a new family of audio ICs. In order to support ODMs developing multimedia enabled devices aimed at the Asian markets such as China, Fangtek has also licensed a regionalized wavetable that will provide product designers access to Asian ethnic instruments such as gu zheng, erhu, di gehu, and Yangqin.

Fangtek, a fabless IC design house based in San Jose, CA, designs application specific integrated circuits for the mobile device market, with an emphasis on cell phone enabling technology. Although Fangtek currently produces an audio processor, the inclusion of Sonic’s EAS technology will provide additional functionality by way of MIDI enabled audio synthesis, a technology that provides polyphonic ringtone generation on cellular handsets. The first product scheduled for production with the Sonic EAS will provide more polyphony at a superior performance/cost value than currently available devicesLater versions will provide MP3 and other audio CODECs in the device as well.

When asked how Fangtek came to chose Sonic Network as it’s MIDI synthesis IP provider, Fang Shen, President and CEO at Fangtek stated “We talked to several manufacturers of embedded audio synthesis technology and found that Sonic has a unique technique for creating and utilizing the small wavetables that are needed on an application specific IC such as ours. While memory limitations dictate the use of a small wavetable, our customers are demanding a higher quality sound for their cell phone designs. Sonic manufactures not only the MIDI synthesizer, but also the wavetables that are used with such synthesizers to reproduce music from a MIDI stream. Therefore, their design optimizes the size quality of the solution for very small processor and memory footprints.” Shen goes on to state that another consideration in vendor selection was their desire to speed up development time thereby reducing their time to market. He adds “Sonic’s experience and expertise in the area of MIDI wavetable synthesis technology is quite well known, and we felt that selecting them as our supplier would ensure a successful product implementation given our aggressive project schedule. We have found them to be very responsive and knowledgeable, and their unlimited wavetable consulting has been immensely helpful in creating a regionalized wavetable that meets our market needs.”

Jenifer Hruska, president and founder of Sonic Network states “Our stylized and regionalized wavetable options are something that makes us unique from our competition. For instance, many companies are targeting the Chinese wireless markets with phones that incorporate polyphonic ringers. But since these ringers are based on wavetables defined by a General MIDI (GM) specification, there are a lot of regional traditional instruments that GM cannot replicate. Fangtek wanted to provide real instruments for their special market. Since we have our own in-house recording and production facilities and have over 20 years of experience in producing wavetables, we were able to create a customer wavetable for this customer which contained specifically requested instruments native to the Chinese culture.”

About EAS

Sonic Network's Embedded Audio System (EAS) technology is a multi-platform audio engine for a variety of embedded audio systems and devices such as semiconductors, wireless handsets, PDAs, sound cards, toys, and other consumer devices. The EAS solution is a customizable software package comprised of a digital audio player, General MIDI (GM) synthesizer, matched wavetable soundsets, and audio extensions for multiple MIDI formats, digital audio effects, mixers, audio codecs, and graphics integration.

About Sonic Network, Inc.

Sonic Network, Inc. provides embedded audio technology and content (music and sounds) that enable high quality, engaging audio and multi-media playback. The company licenses its products in a wide variety of markets including Wireless Devices, Semiconductors, PC Soundcards, Games, and Music Synthesizers. Consumers enjoy crystal clear music and multi-media playback on all devices, despite a particular platform's memory, processing or functional constraints. For this reason, Sonic has gained a well-deserved reputation of providing superb next-generation quality audio.

About Fangtek

Based in San Jose, Ca, Fangtek is a fabless IC design house which designs mobile audio, media and game processors to support media processing applications. Its technology consists of mixed-Signal CMOS, integrated DSP, and embedded RSIC processor technologies. Fangtek’s target markets for these devices are cellular phones, handheld game players, digital music players, toys, Internet appliances, PDAs and other mobile devices.