Bluetooth hardware specialist CSR is integrating compression technology from APT Ltd. with CSR’s digital signal processor-based BlueCore5-Multimedia platform and has also added support for ATS6000MM SoundClear software from Acoustic Technologies.

CSR’s BlueCore5-Multimedia platform includes a 64 MIPS Kalimba DSP co-processor to support the integration of third-party software enhancements. Anthony Murray, senior vice president of CSR’s Wireless Audio Strategic Business Unit, said CSR’s product roadmap has been driven by demand for wireless audio products that can offer the same quality as premium, wired counterparts.

Murray noted that APT’s apt-X technology is an established standard for audio transport in professional broadcast and film post-production. He added that APT’s enhanced apt-X algorithm offers CSR customers “much improved” wireless audio quality, providing reduced processing latency compared to the Bluetooth standard smart bitrate control (SBC) encoding, without compromising power consumption.

Murray said Acoustic Technologies’ ATS6000MM software will allow BlueCore-Multimedia customers to integrate advanced noise cancellation and enhanced speech intelligibility into automotive navigation and hands-free systems, among other products.

Earlier CSR launched RoadRunner Plug-n-Talk, a “ready engineered and fully-interoperable automotive solution” for creating a low-cost Bluetooth hands-free kit. It features a full hardware reference design, Bluetooth stack, profile suite, application software and CSR's proprietary clear voice capture (CVC) software. Murray said CVC improves voice quality by combining echo and noise suppression algorithms that allow a speaker's voice to be more clearly extracted and transmitted. The RoadRunner kit also includes a demonstration of text-to-speech software from NowSpeak developed specifically for BlueCore-Multimedia.