With BassPower for headphones, Dolphin Integration eliminates up to 80% of external capacitor cost

Grenoble, France – June 14, 2013 -- Adequate IP procurement may serve well for cost reduction on the Bill of Material. For portable devices, such as Smartphones and Tablets, the race to the reduction of device thickness adds constraints on PCB area and package thickness. Dolphin Integration blows it all by providing Audio Codecs with their new BassPower^TM headphone feature. This innovation has been implemented in response to economical market constraints, thanks to its very low silicon area enabling a significant cost reduction of the Bill of Material.

For mastering this application challenge and dealing with TRRS phone connectors (Left/Right output with microphone input) - mandatory in hands-free set applications -, Dolphin now provides two different solutions:

• A True-ground headphone driver, the best solution whenever triple-well option is already used by other part of the SoC.
• The BassPower^TM solution, maintaining cost down by using standard CMOS processes. BassPower^TM enables reducing the capacitor value from 220 uF down to 10 uF!

A flexible solution

BassPower^TM is also provided with three pre-defined settings (Ultra-linear, Bass Attack preserved, Max volume) for adjusting the BassPower^TM flavor.

The high configurability of bass compensation over frequencies allows to support a large set of application schematics, enabling the user to define the best trade-off between Bill-of-Material and maximum output power delivered to the headphone. Furthermore, BassPower^TM remains the same from one audio source to another whatever the sampling frequency, in contrast to DSP solutions which need to readjust their settings.

Consequently, BassPower^TM enables a cost-effective solution for smartphone and tablet applications and preserves the quality of audio experience.

Audio converter portfolio:

• Proven 24-bit sigma-delta Audio Codec from 180 nm to 40 nm available in major foundries
• Up to 100 dB of SNR
• THD: -80 dB for the line-in to ADC path
• < 8.0 mW of power consumption for DAC playback mode at 2.5V

Please, click here for more information about our Audio Converter catalogue, or/and contact our Marketing Manager at jazz.audio@dolphin.fr

About Dolphin Integration

Dolphin Integration contribute to "enabling mixed signal Systems-on-Chip". Their focus is to supply worldwide customers with fault-free, high-yield and reliable kits of CMOS Virtual Components of Silicon IP, based on innovative libraries of standard cells, flexible registers and low-power memories. They provide high-resolution converters for audio and measurement, regulators for efficient power supply networks, application optimized micro-controllers.

They put emphasis on resilience to noise and drastic reductions of power-consumption at system level, thanks to their own EDA solutions missing on the market for Application Hardware Modeling as well as early Power and Noise assessment. Such diverse experience in ASIC/SoC design and fabrication, plus privileged foundry portal even for small or medium volumes, makes them a genuine one-stop shop covering all customers’ needs for specific requests.