ARC and SiTel cooperate to enhance DECT phone call clarity with Sonic Focus Audio Software

- ARC International (LSE: ARK) and SiTel Semiconductor announced today a collaboration effort to provide superior voice clarity for phones implementing  SiTel's high performance chips and ARC's new Vocal Clarity post-processing software. The improvements in voice clarity and audio fidelity represent a quantum step forward in voice communication.   

Voice clarity and audio improvement have been anxiously anticipated by major phone Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) striving to enhance their phone's performance to deliver a superior end-user experience.  The jointly integrated audio solution will result in much clearer voice recognition, without the need to increase the peak amplitude of the incoming voice stream. Such perceived volume increases with ARC's unique pseudo wideband extensions will dramatically ease listener fatigue and improve comprehension in noisy environments, even if the incoming voice is distorted or received with relatively low signal strength. The ARC Vocal Clarity software for cordless phones will run on SiTel's "Gen2DSP" processor. This Gen2DSP co-processor is included in all SiTel SC14480 and SC14450 series cordless phone chips as a standard.

ARC's unique Vocal Clarity Software is a subset of a broad range of technologies included in ARC's Sonic Focus Audio post- processing software enrichment technology.   Sonic Focus Audio IP has been successfully deployed in over 25 million products by major Personal Computer (PC) OEMs delivering superior sound quality to the consumer. The Sonic Focus technology enables superior audio and voice quality for all classes of consumer products, including mobile and portable devices, while also lowering overall power consumption with the potential to reduce build-of-material (BoM) costs.   The ARC Sound-to-Silicon solution integrates the ARC Sound multi-standard audio processor with industry standard codecs and ARC's Sonic Focus Sound enhancement technology, and is the only single-source vertically integrated solution that provides IC and system designers with a low cost solution for superior sound quality and voice clarity.

"We identified the potential of ARC's Sonics Focus Audio Enrichment technology to help improve SiTel's DECT solutions' voice clarity. When watching an action movie with lots of background noise, with actors having meaningful conversations, the overall sound quality and voice intelligibility dramatically improved when Sonic Focus was turned on.  Suddenly, the actors' conversation became clearer and a lot easier to understand", said Asmund Tielens, SiTel's CEO. "Our goal by working with ARC is to bring this voice clarity feature into every phone conversation. I am confident that any DECT phone using SiTel's enhanced vocal clarity DECT IC will produce clearer voices which are better to understand than in any other phone in the market today."

"We are delighted that SiTel Semiconductor has chosen to partner with ARC for the implementation of our Sonic Focus Vocal Clarity technology in support of their industry leading OEM solutions. Having one of the world's leading SoC companies in voice telephony endorse our audio solution confirms the unique value of our IP in this huge market space" said Sean Redmond, VP of Worldwide Sales and Marketing, ARC International.  "Working with Sitel has proven to be a mutually valuable partnership that will successfully deliver superior voice experience to OEM companies and their consumers."
   
About ARC International

ARC International is a world leading provider of consumer IP to OEM and semiconductor companies globally.  ARC's award-winning, vertically integrated audio and video solutions enable high quality multimedia content to be captured, shared, and played on a wide range of electronics devices.  ARC's 150+ customers collectively ship hundreds of millions of ARC-Based™ chips annually in products such as Mobile TVs, Portable Media Players, WiFi-/WiMAX-enabled computers, flash storage, digital cameras, network appliances, and medical and government systems.
ARC International maintains a worldwide presence with corporate and research and development offices in San Jose and Lake Tahoe, Calif., St. Albans, England, and St. Petersburg, Russia.  For more information, visit www.ARC.com.  ARC International is listed on the London Stock Exchange as ARC International plc (LSE: ARK).

About SiTel Semiconductor B.V.

SiTel Semiconductor BV was established in June 2005, following a management buy-out from National Semiconductor Corporation. Headquartered in 's-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands. SiTel is a fabless IC manufacturer with design centers in The Netherlands and Greece along with regional sales offices in Hong Kong, Japan and the U.S. The company specializes in the design, manufacturing and marketing of high-performance CMOS solutions for digital cordless and corded communication and is the world's number one DCT supplier for cordless voice, real-time data and VoIP.   
For more information, please visit www.sitelsemi.com