Windows Mobile Smartphone Powered With intent Rocks Electronic Music Festival

Business Wire, Sept 10, 2003

Entertainment Editors/Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

READING, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 10, 2003

250,000-Watt Generative Music Performance Created by

Mobile Software Application.

On Sunday night at the annual Ars Electronica Festival, the Banks of the River Danube played host to what is believed to be the world's first live concert featuring music and sounds generated entirely on-the-fly from a mobile phone application. Using BAFTA award winning SSEYO(R) Koan(R) generative music software running on the intent(R) Sound System from Tao Group, curator and performer Tim Didymus played music for his 250,000-watt electronic ambience set from his Microsoft Windows Mobile-based i-Mate(TM) Smartphone, utilising the seamlessly integrated high performance intent Sound System.

"The ability to play multimedia content on mobile phones is key to driving revenue potential for mobile operators and creating exciting new experiences for customers," said Mark Spain, director of the Mobile Devices Division at Microsoft Corp. "Tao's media and technology expertise combined with the functionality and familiarity of the Windows Mobile Smartphone opens the door to more innovation and opportunity across the entertainment and mobile industries."

Tao's intent Sound System (iSS) brings unparalleled audio capabilities to mobile devices. It includes comprehensive audio and MIDI frameworks for audio effects plugins, visualisers, synthesisers, music engines and codecs, as well as playing high quality polyphonic MIDI or audio ringtones in a wide range of popular formats.

With its rich set of features and extensive APIs, the iSS allows application developers to utilise advanced interactive audio and MIDI techniques in games, visualisers or equally in music tools and players. In providing an extendable framework, it also creates exciting possibilities for developers of plugin audio engines, synthesizers and effects, in turn developing new opportunities for musicians, creatives and content developers.

For mobile phones in particular, the importance of high quality sounds for revenue generating content is becoming more evident. Recently the Mobile Data Association predicted that sales of ringtones would soon exceed sales of CD singles.

Tim Cole, co-founder of SSEYO and now Audio Products Manager at Tao Group said "With the iSS we have now reached a very exciting point in the evolution of mobile audio capabilities, leading to new commercial opportunities. For operators, manufacturers and application developers the iSS opens the door to enormous new possibilities for the use of music and audio in gaming, messaging, tools and entertainment."

The iSS and various ringtone solutions can be deployed as compact standalone products, or as part of a more comprehensive integrated intent deployment including, for example, Tao's world leading MIDP2 and PersonalJava solutions. The open and flexible modular approach of intent gives manufacturers the freedom to select the components they want, improving the nimbleness of manufacturers to respond to market changes and so reducing time to market.

The iSS is a suite of audio technologies and includes:

-- Audio framework: for high performance low-latency audio mixing

and streaming for both audio in/out.

-- MIDI framework: for deployment of either hardware or software

MIDI synthesizers.

-- MIDI Synthesiser: Tao's own outstanding, scalable polyphonic

MIDI wavetable synthesizer.

-- Audio and Visualiser plugin frameworks: for FX and sound/music

engines, such as reverb, filters and tone generators, 3D

spatial positioning, MIDI harmonisers / generators /

renderers, and audio sensitive visualisers.

-- Browser plugin framework: for advanced JavaScript usage of all

iSS components within Tao's Qi control center & browser.

-- Codec framework: for easy extension of the iSS to accommodate

new audio/MIDI codecs and formats.

-- Standard Formats: Support for: SP-MIDI, MIDI, MP3 (with 3rd

party codec), OGG, MOD, WAV (incl. ADPCM), AU, PCM, DLS, SKM,

RTTTL, I-Melody, Koan (SKD/SKP/TextVector), Tone Sequence.

-- Hybrid Formats: Support for SKM format, an "open" XML-based

meta content format, allowing MIDI files / MIDI generators to

use accompanying compressed or uncompressed audio samples in

combination (as required) with standard MIDI sounds; the

samples can be used to build multiple customisable virtual DLS

banks and can be used as MIDI driven "recycled break beats".

The Ars Electronica Festival is taking place 6-11 September 2003 at Danaupark, Linz, Austria.

Notes to Editors

1) For information about the intent Sound System visit:

http://withintent.biz/index2.php?Cat=4&AntX=67

This site also contains a downloadable intent Sound System factsheet and a technology white paper on the intent multimedia platform.

2) For detailed developer information, including intent Sound System APIs, visit: http://www.sseyo.com/tao_group/ave/iss/api.html

3) For information about the Koan generative music software visit: http://www.sseyo.com/koan/koanVectorAudio_GenerativeMusic.html