by Anton Shilov
12/09/2004 | 11:15 PM
During this week’s meetings with journalists NVIDIA’s CEO and President Jen-Hsun Huang said the company was going to return its popular audio solution called SoundStorm in a way that is not usual for audio products.
<%BANNER[article]%>NVIDIA’s original SoundStorm is an integrated audio engine in some of NVIDIA’s nForce3 media and communication processors. NVIDIA’s nForce2 MCP-T provides some impressive audio technologies for gaming, watching movies and listening to music, whereas the newer nForce3 and nForce4 series does not integrate the advanced audio capabilities due to chip complexity constraints.
In early 2000 NVIDIA acquired virtually the whole patent portfolio as well as hired development staff from Aureal – a well-known maker of audio solutions from the late nineties – that was not successful, but invented a number of impressive audio technologies. As a result, NVIDIA has been about to enter a new market for itself for some time now, at least, the company has had everything that is required for this: reputation, strong team of developers and a successful marketing team.
The CEO and President of the company confirmed plans to build the SoundStorm 2 this week and called the forthcoming solution “awesome”, however, he did not elaborate on details, but claimed the implementation of the product may surprise the market, which may mean that the SoundStorm will not be launched as a component along with a new chipset from NVIDIA Corp..
In mid-2003 NVIDIA alluded that a new type of SoundStorm audio may be released as a standalone product.
Audio market is not as hot as the market of graphics processors. The vast majority of end-users are satisfied with their integrated audio solutions available on most of the mainboards and personal computers. However, there are enthusiasts, who prefer add-in products, such as Creative Labs’ Audigy or Live! audio cards. NVIDIA is unlikely to have an ability to grab a share in lower-end or mainstream market, where integrated solutions, including NVIDIA’s own products, provide enough options, though, performance mainstream and high-end markets may pay attention to the SoundStorm 2 audio products from one of the most-successful graphics chips designer.
X-bit labs’ Editor in Chief Anna Filatova contributed to this report.