Today, Texas Instruments announced support for Microsoft’s RT Audio codec in its voice over IP chip sets, paving the way for an influx of new devices that work with Microsoft’s Office Communications system 2007 Unified Communications platform — and much greater choice for customers thinking about deploying Microsoft’s platform.
As I noted previously in my review of OCS 2007, RT Audio is an adaptive codec. In high-bandwidth situations, the codec is in a wideband mode, offering HD audio quality. But in lower-bandwidth situations, the codec scales back to narrowband and standard definition voice quality automatically — which requires less network bandwidth. In both modes, I found the codec provided good audio quality without taxing my client machine’s resources significantly (even with the signal processing done in software).
But with the codec integrated into TI’s DSPs (Digital Signal Processors), OEMs can now rapidly produce a variety of different devices to work with OCS — from desktop phones to mobile phones to trunk gateway devices.
In the press release, TI General Manager of Communications Infrastructure and Voice Business Brian Glinsman said, “By working closely with Microsoft to include their wideband codec into TI’s VoIP solutions, we are supporting the dissemination of unified communications solutions to the market and further enabling Microsoft to quickly meet the application demands of service providers, enterprises and SMBs.”
TI’s DSPs supporting RT Audio should be available midyear.