Aureal Semiconductor

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Please improve this article if you can. (November 2006)

Aureal Semiconductor Inc

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

1 History
2 Technologies and products
3 References
4 External links

[edit] History

On March 5th, 1998[1], Creative Labs sued Aureal for patent infringement. Aureal countersued because they believed Creative was guilty of 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, other property, as well as a release to Creative from any infringement by Creative of Aureal's intellectual property including A3D. The purchase effectively eliminated Creative's only competition in the gaming audio market. It also eliminated any requirements for Creative to pay past or future royalties as well as damages for products which incorporated Aureal's technology.

[edit] Technologies and products

Aureal's technology was originally advertised as development by NASA. The original NASA program was to create accurate 3D sound with only a set of headphones. This was in an attempt to cut costs, as speakers were more expensive during this time. Aureal took some of the technology and re-branded it as A3D.

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 1990s.