Aureal Semiconductor Inc. was an American

electronics The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...

manufacturer, best known throughout the mid-late 1990s for their PC sound card technologies including

A3D Aureal Semiconductor Inc. was an American electronics manufacturer, best known throughout the mid-late 1990s for their PC sound card technologies including A3D and the Vortex (a line of audio ASICs.) The company was the reincarnation of the, at ...

and the

Vortex In fluid dynamics, a vortex ( : vortices or vortexes) is a region in a fluid in which the flow revolves around an axis line, which may be straight or curved. Vortices form in stirred fluids, and may be observed in smoke rings, whirlpools in th ...

(a line of audio

ASIC An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-efficien ...

s.) The company was the reincarnation of the, at the time, bankrupt

Media Vision Media Vision Technology, Inc., was an American electronics manufacturer of primarily computer sound cards and CD-ROM kits, operating from 1990 to approximately 1995 in Fremont, California. Media Vision was widely known for its Pro AudioSpectrum ...

Technology, who developed and manufactured multimedia peripherals such as the Pro Audio Spectrum 16.

History

Prior to May 1996, Aureal Semiconductor were Media Vision Technologies Inc. after being caught in a financial scandal. Media Vision incurred approximately $104 million of aggregate losses in 1995 before the company was renamed. Aureal sustained further losses of $17 million in 1996 and $18 million in 1997. After having acquired

Crystal River Engineering Crystal River Engineering Inc. was an American technology company best known for their pioneering work in HRTF based real-time binaural, or 3D sound processing hardware and software. The company was founded in 1989 by Scott Foster after he recei ...

in May 1996, Aureal worked with them to develop and market the A3D audio technology. The technology was incorporated into video games, surround sound systems and

sound card A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external audio i ...

s. On March 5, 1998

Creative Labs Creative Technology Ltd. is a Singaporean multinational technology company headquartered with overseas offices in Shanghai, Tokyo, Dublin, and Silicon Valley (where in the US it is known as Creative Labs). The principal activities of the compa ...

sued Aureal for patent infringement. Aureal countersued because they believed Creative was guilty of patent infringement. After numerous lawsuits Aureal won a favorable ruling in December 1999, which vindicated Aureal from these patent infringement claims, but the legal costs were too high and Aureal filed for

bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor ...

. On September 21, 2000, Creative acquired Aureal's assets from its

bankruptcy trustee A trustee in bankruptcy is an entity, often an individual, in charge of administering a bankruptcy estate. Canada In Canada, a licensed insolvency trustee (LIT) is an individual or a corporation licensed by the official superintendent to hol ...

for US$32 million through the

bankruptcy court United States bankruptcy courts are courts created under Article I of the United States Constitution. The current system of bankruptcy courts was created by the United States Congress in 1978, effective April 1, 1984. United States bankruptcy c ...

, with the specific provision that Creative Labs would be released from all claims of past infringement by Creative Labs upon Aureal's A3D technology. The purchase included patents, trademarks, other property, as well as a release to Creative from any infringement by Creative of Aureal's intellectual property including

. The purchase effectively eliminated Creative's only competition in the gaming audio market. It also eliminated any requirements for Creative to pay past or future royalties as well as damages for products which incorporated Aureal's technology.

Technologies and products

Contrary to OEM companies (such as Creative which builds, brands and sells their own devices), Aureal was a fabless semiconductor company. This changed with their final product: the Aureal SuperQuad. However, to not anger the middlemen, Aureal did no marketing of its self-branded product.

Vortex

The Vortex audio accelerator chipset line from Aureal Semiconductor was designed to improve performance of their then-popular

audio technology. The first member of the line, the Vortex AU8820, was announced on July 14, 1997, and was used in by a number of sound card manufacturers, like Yamaha and Turtle Beach. After Aureal's release of A3D 2.0, the Vortex AU8830 (known as the Vortex 2) was announced on August 6, 1998. The Vortex 2 chipset won numerous industry awards, and was used among other places in the

Diamond Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the Chemical stability, chemically stable form of car ...

Monster Sound MX300, which achieved near-cult status with audiophiles and gamers for the high quality of its positional audio. Near the end of Aureal's existence, they released a Vortex Advantage budget sound card aimed at systems integrators, which ran on the Vortex AU8810 chipset. Towards the end of 1999, the SQ3500 was announced, which ran on the Vortex AU8830 chipset, with the main addition being a new "Turbo DSP" daughter-board module. All Vortex soundcards are still functional with latest Windows 2000/Windows XP drivers in Windows Vista and Windows 7 (32 bit editions only). While Windows XP will recognize and work with the 8830 Vortex 2 chipset, there is an official Final Beta (v5.12.2568.0) available for download from a variety of sites which can be found via most internet search engines. There is also a modified version of the XP driver that can provide basic audio functionality for the Windows Vista operating system and may also function with Windows 7 beta releases.

A3D

A3D (Aureal 3-Dimensional) is the technology used by Aureal Semiconductor in their Vortex line of PC sound chips to deliver three-dimensional sound through headphones, two or even four speakers. The technology used

head-related transfer function A head-related transfer function (HRTF), also known as anatomical transfer function (ATF), is a response that characterizes how an ear receives a sound from a point in space. As sound strikes the listener, the size and shape of the head, ears, e ...

s (HRTF), which the human ear interprets as spatial cues indicating the location of a particular sound source. Many modern

s and

PC game A personal computer game, also known as a PC game or computer game, is a type of video game played on a personal computer (PC) rather than a video game console or arcade machine. Its defining characteristics include: more diverse and user-deter ...

s incorporated A3D via license from Aureal. Due to Aureal's acquisition (see below) the A3D technology is now part of the intellectual property of

. The technology was originally developed by

for NASA's Virtual Environment Workstation Project (VIEW). Crystal River later commercialized the technology with a series of products including the Convolvotron and the Acoustetron. Aureal acquired Crystal River in May 1996 and rebranded the technology A3D. A3D differs from various forms of discrete positional audio in that it only requires two speakers, while

surround sound Surround sound is a technique for enriching the fidelity and depth of sound reproduction by using multiple audio channels from speakers that surround the listener ( surround channels). Its first application was in movie theaters. Prior to sur ...

typically requires more than four. The particular advantage of A3D is for dynamic or interactive environments such as simulations, games, video conference, and remote learning. A3D is not as effective for static productions such as movies which typically employ

. A3D uses a subset of the actual in-game 3D world data to accurately model the location of both direct (A3Dspace) and reflected (A3Dverb) sound streams (A3D 2.0 can perform up to 60 first-order reflections). EAX 1.0, the competing technology at the time promoted by Creative Labs, simulated the environment with an adjustable reverb—it didn't calculate any actual reflections off the 3D surfaces. A3D was supported by

3DMark 3DMark is a computer benchmarking tool created and developed by UL, (formerly Futuremark), to determine the performance of a computer's 3D graphic rendering and CPU workload processing capabilities. Running 3DMark produces a 3DMark score, with hi ...

along with many other software titles of the late 1990s, including ''

Half-Life Half-life (symbol ) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable ato ...

'', ''

Unreal Unreal may refer to: Books and TV * ''Unreal'' (short story collection), a 1985 book of short stories by Paul Jennings * ''Unreal'' (TV series), a 2015 television drama series on Lifetime Computing and games * ''Unreal'' (video game series), ...

'', ''

Quake II ''Quake II'' is a 1997 first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Activision. It is the second installment of the Quake (series), ''Quake'' series, but not a direct sequel to ''Quake (video game), Quake''. The game ...

'', '' Soldier of Fortune'', '' Jedi Knight'', ''

SiN In a religious context, sin is a transgression against divine law. Each culture has its own interpretation of what it means to commit a sin. While sins are generally considered actions, any thought, word, or act considered immoral, selfish, s ...

'', ''

Quake III Arena ''Quake III Arena'' is a 1999 multiplayer-focused first-person shooter developed by id Software. The third installment of the ''Quake'' series, ''Arena'' differs from previous games by excluding a story-based single-player mode and focusing prima ...

'' (up to version 1.25), ''

Unreal Tournament ''Unreal Tournament'' is a first-person arena shooter video game developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes. The second installment in the ''Unreal'' series, it was first published by GT Interactive in 1999 for Microsoft Windows, and later r ...

'' and '' Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force''. Following Aureal Semiconductor's acquisition by Creative, support for the API was discontinued.

References

External links

*
"Power struggle forced Aureal walkout"
- ExtremeTech interview with Kenneth 'Kip' Kokinakis (President, CEO)

*{{Cite web, title=Crystal River spinoff from NASA, url=http://technology.arc.nasa.gov/success/successfiles/3DAudioSysConvolvotron_1992.pdf, url-status=dead, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060928214009/http://technology.arc.nasa.gov/success/successfiles/3DAudioSysConvolvotron_1992.pdf, archive-date=September 28, 2006, access-date=October 22, 2021, website=

- A legacy web site featuring news about Aureal and its A3D technology.

- An old website with information, drivers, news etc about A3D. Audio equipment manufacturers of the United States Sound cards American companies established in 1995 American companies disestablished in 2000 Defunct computer companies of the United States Manufacturing companies based in California Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Companies based in Fremont, California Computer companies established in 1995 Computer companies disestablished in 2000 Manufacturing companies established in 1995 Manufacturing companies disestablished in 2000 Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Creative Technology acquisitions

History

Technologies and products

Vortex

A3D

See also

References

External links