Philips Takes ThunderBird's Reigns

Electronic News, Nov 1, 1999 by Peter Brown

Philips Semiconductors Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif., will today unveil the ThunderBird Avenger PCI audio accelerator that the company claims enables 5.1 channel playback for PC gaming, music playback and watching movies through computers.

The audio accelerator combines hardware acceleration, effective two-speaker 3D virtualization and multichannel speaker support. Philips said this combination makes a good offering for those consumers who want to upgrade the quality of sound in their PC by an add-in card and through motherboard manufacturers.

"We predict that demand for MP3-type portable players will grow from a million units this year to 15 million units in 2003, driving several times that number of Internet PC players to be installed and millions of music audio selections to be downloaded," said Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, a market research firm based in Tempe, Ariz. "The thirst for exciting music experience is driving the market for high-quality 3D sound."

Strauss said the ThunderBird Avenger is poised to leverage Philips' strength in consumer audio and its multimedia portfolio.

"Philips accommodates every audio application for the PC including USB audio, signal processing power amplifiers and now PCI audio," said Gunther Dengel, managing director for Consumer Systems at Philips Semiconductors. Dengel said the ThunderBird Avenger is a good example of how the VLSI and Philips are combing products and utilizing the best of both companies.

The chip will be able to support 5.1 encoded DVDs and 3D audio games using a home theatre 5.1 speaker format. Philips claims that the Avenger is the only offering that transforms the PC into a home theatre as well by providing this 5.1 playback for music, movies, MP3 files and MIDI files. The ThunderBird Avenger, including 2, 4 and 5.1 channel and S/PDIF support, is priced at $12.45 in 10,000 unit quantities. The chip is sampling with production slated to begin in the first quarter of next year. For 2- and 4-channel applications not requiring S/PDIF, the Thunderbird Q3D is priced at $9.60 in 10,000 unit quantities.

The chip incorporates QSound labs' 3D algorithms developed for speaker playback and cross-talk cancellation. The S/PDIF feature enables users to output AC-3 data from a DVD directly to an AC-3 decoder. The stereo output capability allows users to connect to consumer audio equipment such as stereo receivers, minidisk and digital speakers.

Philips will have to put its manufacturing and consumer prowess behind it because the company faces some significant challenges ahead of it in the PC audio space. Cirrus Logic's Crystal Products division, Creative Labs, ESS Technology and Yamaha are all already prevalent and have a significant impact in the market. Philips to be successful will have to woo OEMs away from these companies who have already signed up with its competitors. However, Philips is a huge company and could possibly offer benefits other smaller companies cannot, namely in terms of price, benefits and options to the PC OEMs.

Regardless, where VLSI once was a ship without a captain in the PC audio market, Philips may bring some potential to the company for it to make some headway, and revenues, in the audio storm.