STMicroelectronics presents a new sound terminal for all kinds of music

STMicroelectronics has announced that the STA339BWS has just joined their Sound Terminal™ digital product family.

Sound Terminals™ are single chip turn-key solutions for audio applications. They allow the sound to follow a fully digital path from the audio source to the loudspeaker thus reducing the BOM and design costs, the footprint area and at the same time improving the pureness of the sound. Forget about quality loss due to analog/digital back and forth transitions!

At the core of the Sound Terminal™ architecture there are three elements:

• a top-notch digital sound processor (DSP)
• a FFX™ cell (“Full Flexible Amplification” - ST proprietary technology) for digital low distortion, low noise PCM-to-PWM conversion
• the world’s most efficient class D power stages

STA339BWS is the ultimate answer to all the challenging requests that have recently arisen in the global audio consumer market. Driven by the goal of providing an audio IC able to aptly compensate a non linear frequency response typical of low cost speakers, the R&D team developed a state-of-the-art DSP.

In STA339BWS, advanced DSP features such as Multi-band DRC (MDRC) make use of exceptional sound processing algorithms to actually turn a low cost speaker into an audiophile standard gadget, preventing unpleasant vibrations and damages to the speakers’ structure thanks to a separate and independent processing of the high and low frequency content of each channel. This adds up to a 28bit eight band equalizer to freely shape the sound, to a post scale limiter to configure the output power rate and to 3 memory banks where pre-stored coefficients of different equalization settings enable a seamless audio streaming also when an audio channel or audio source change occurs. And everything can be easily achieved with the help of an intuitive development tool (APWorkbench).

The unique FFX™ modulator greatly increases the efficiency (not only at maximum dynamic but at listening dynamic as well) maintaining the EMI generated by the PWM safely under control.

STA339BWS is designed to effectively work within a wide single power supply range (4.5V – 21.5V) that makes it the preferred choice of flat panel TVs, set-top boxes and iPod cradle manufacturers.

The existing four half-bridges of the power stage of STA339BWS can easily suit the most requested output power configurations:

• 2.0 (2x20W)
• 2.0 (2x20W) + digital stereo headphone out
• 2.1 (2x10W + 1x20W)

All Sound Terminals™ come in a very small package – PSSO36 slug down for thermal dissipation through the PCB without heat sink – and are surface mounted.

Sound Terminals™ are pin-to-pin compatible with each other and can be grouped, according to the number of features they own, in:

· High-End STA559BWS (4.5 - 16V operative)
(MDRC+8 biquads)          STA339BWS (4.5 - 21.5V operative)
      STA339BW (4.5 - 26V operative)

· Mid-End STA559BW (4.5 - 16V operative)
(DRC+5 biquads)        STA333BW (4.5 - 21.5V operative)
     STA335BW (4.5 - 26V operative)

· Low-End STA559W (4.5 - 16V operative)
(Vol. CTRL “W”)         STA333W & STA333ML (up to 21.5V operative)
(Microless “ML”)         STA335ML (4.5 - 26V operative)

Today you do not need anything more than just one Sound Terminal™ in your product to make music sound better and positively prick up one's ears.

For more information, or details on the full range of STMicroelectronics products available from Anglia please call +44 (0)1945 474747 or email info@anglia.com

Alternatively, click on this link to go to the main STMicroelectronics section where you can view other news articles and product data.

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