Yamaha Announces the PC Industry's First DirectMusic Hardware Accelerator; Increased Music Quality to Benefit Windows Game Developers, Web Site Designers

Business Wire, Nov 17, 1998

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 17, 1998--Yamaha Systems Technology Inc. has developed the industry's first hardware accelerator for Microsoft's DirectMusic application programming interface, increasing the performance of applications that support DirectMusic and leading to improved audio quality for PC owners. The Yamaha DS-X series PCI audio chips will offload DirectMusic synthesis to dedicated hardware, thereby reducing CPU overhead and latency of sound generation on Windows 98 and Windows 2000 operating systems. All of the Yamaha DS-X family of PCI Bus audio chips now have this capability.

"We are pleased to see an early commitment by Yamaha, one of the leaders in the field of electronic music, to the important new Windows technology delivered in DirectMusic," said Kevin Bachus, product manager for DirectX at Microsoft Corp. "Yamaha worked closely with us to enable hardware acceleration for DirectMusic and we look forward to continuing our close relationship to improve music quality on the Windows platform."

"With this new capability, Yamaha again takes the lead in the audio market," said Randy Roscoe, Audio Product Manager, Yamaha Systems Technology, Inc. "Yamaha is bringing the technology from our Music Instruments group to the PC industry. Windows platforms are rapidly becoming the dominant audio controller of choice for professionals and consumers. This is a very good relationship. Although the DirectMusic program is not from Yamaha, this work will benefit gamers using Windows 98 and Windows 2000. As a leading sound chip vendor, we feel a responsibility to our customers who include Intel, Dell Computers, Micron and Packard Bell NEC, among others."

"We integrated DirectMusic support into the Unreal Engine because we and many of our licenses feel it represents the way forward for music on the PC," said Mark Rein, vice president of Epic MegaGames, Inc. "We're extremely excited to see a leader like Yamaha becoming the first out of the gate with hardware acceleration for DirectMusic."

About DirectMusic

DirectMusic is part of the DirectX set of multimedia application programming interfaces for the Windows operating system and is designed to enable Windows to deliver the highest-quality music experience. DirectMusic provides support for MIDI playback and recording, software synthesis, custom instruments (through adherence to the industry-standard Downloadable Sounds (DLS) specification), and interactive, non-repetitious music composition. DirectMusic will be delivered this winter as an update to Windows 95 and Windows 98, and will be included in the forthcoming release of Windows 2000. DirectMusic will also be provided to software developers and composers as part of the Microsoft DirectX Software Development Kit.

About the DS-X PCI Audio Chip

The YMF724 and YMF740 have been widely used by sound card and mother board manufacturers. Some of the attributes of the chips include: 676 instruments (individual sounds) including 480 XG instruments. 64 simultaneous 48 kHz voices in hardware (32 voices for the YMF740). -0-

     --   AC'97 compliant audio with on-chip PCI interface.
     --   100% compatibility with the historic industry standard
          General MIDI (GM) while providing even richer musical
          expressions.
     --   Supports DLS (DownLoadable Sounds).

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Yamaha Systems Technology, Inc. was founded to manufacture and market integrated circuits, board level products and complete systems to OEMs and Distributors. The product line includes multimedia audio, graphics and communications products, as well as custom and semicustom ASICs, and CD Recorder products. www.yamahayst.com

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