Aureal Semiconductor

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Aureal Semiconductor
Aureal logo
Type Corporation
Founded 1995
Headquarters Fremont, California
Key people Kenneth 'Kip' Kokinakis, President and CEO
Industry Audio Technologies
Website http://www.aureal.com (closed down)

Aureal Semiconductor was an American electronics manufacturer, best known throughout the mid-late 1990s for their PC sound card technologies including A3D and the Vortex line of audio ASICs. The Company was the reincarnation of the then bankrupt Media Vision Technology, developer and manufacturer of multimedia peripherals such as the Pro Audio Spectrum 16.

Contents

[edit] History

On March 5th, 1998[1], Creative Labs sued Aureal for 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. On September 21st, 2000, Creative acquired Aureal's assets from its bankruptcy trustee for US$ 32 million. The purchase included patents, trademarks and other property, effectively eliminating Creative's only competition in the gaming audio market.

[edit] Technologies and products

  • Aureal's technology was advertised as originally under development by NASA. The original NASA program was to create accurate 3D sound with only a set of headphones. This was to try to cut costs, as speakers were more expensive during this time. Aureal took some of the technology and re-branded it as A3D. This was similar to Creative's EAX.
  • Contrary to OEM companies (such as Creative which builds brands and sells their own devices), Aureal was a fabless semiconductor company.
  • This changed with the last product - the Aureal SuperQuad. However, to not anger the middlemen, Aureal did no marketing of its self-branded product.
  • On the software side, A3D was supported by 3DMark along with many other software titles of the late 1990's.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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