Beatnik, Inc. - Enhanced Audio Solutions

BEATNIK LAUNCHES mobileBAE™, WORLD'S FIRST XMF-COMPLIANT AUDIO ENGINE FOR MOBILE DEVICES

New eXtensible Music Format™ (XMF™) audio engine enables handset manufacturers to offer high quality synthesised music and effects for mobile devices

Cannes, France - February 19, 2002 - Beatnik, Inc., a leading provider of open standards-based structured audio software solutions for mobile devices, today announced the launch of its next-generation Beatnik Audio Engine™, which provides the world's first XMF™-enabled software audio solution for resource constrained phones. The mobileBAE™ has an extremely small footprint, allowing handset manufacturers to easily incorporate musical polyphonic ringtones, custom audio samples, user interface sounds, multimedia messaging and game sound effects in any mobile device, including mobile phones and PDAs. The mobileBAE will be available in Q2, 2002.

The mobileBAE supports the industry standard eXtensible Music Format (XMF) files, which combine multiple music and sound formats, such as MIDI and linear digital samples, into a single file that can be mixed and played back instantaneously. An XMF file can be extremely small - for example, 62kb for 3 minutes of music, with higher quality than most streaming audio formats. The mobileBAE also supports the Downloadable Sounds (DLS) and Scalable Polyphony MIDI standards which optimise audio content for resource-constrained devices, making XMF ideal for wireless applications including mobile phone ring tones, audio entertainment service delivery and games applications.

"Network operators are increasingly demanding devices that can support high-quality audio to complement advanced messaging and interactive gaming services," said Lorraine Hariton, president and CEO of Beatnik. "The mobileBAE provides a good fit for both device manufacturers and network operators because it enables high-quality, open standards-based audio services on mass-market handheld devices, which have limited memory and processor power. This provides a range of new revenue generation opportunities for the wireless industry such as offering premium, musical ringtones or increasing data traffic in the network through users swapping audio clips via multimedia messaging."

The mobileBAE is a scalable software audio solution complete with a music synthesiser, linear audio player, effects processor, sample rate converter, and a 16-channel mixer. Hardware independent and optimised to work in constrained embedded environments, mobileBAE provides a complete audio sub-system for mobile devices without the need to include additional dedicated hardware devices, thus reducing the cost to the manufacturer. The mobileBAE is designed to play back and mix popular audio file formats such as XMF, MP3, WAV, AIFF and MIDI. The mobileBAE enhances MIDI by adding custom samples to recreate the original sound of the music.

Download the mobileBAE datasheet here. (.pdf)

About Beatnik, Inc.
Beatnik licenses scalable, standards-based structured audio software solutions for mobile devices which enable rich multimedia content delivery and an enhanced user experience for games and device interaction. Beatnik markets its core software technology and audio content development tools to mobile device manufacturers and a community of creative professionals. Incorporated in 1996, Beatnik was founded by musician and composer Thomas Dolby Robertson.

For more information on Beatnik, Inc., go to: www.beatnik.com or contact: .