Austin, Texas — D2Audio Inc., here, has introduced a digital amplifier with closed-loop feedback technology that corrects, on-the-fly, the audio signal being amplified.

Founded in 2002, D2Audio has developed a line of digital amplifier ICs and modules, as well as supporting software. At last week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company an-

nounced its second-generation digital audio engine, which adjusts the audio signal to correct for fluctuations within the audio system, including the speakers. The DAE-2 also compensates for changes caused by unregulated power supplies, with a feed-forward capability called digital power supply correction.

Will Strauss, president of market research firm Forward Concepts (Tempe, Ariz.), said D2Audio's full-bandwidth digital feedback technology will “finally enable the industry's transition from traditional analog amplifiers into the all-digital age.”

Three chips to start

The initial three DAE-2 chips will target audio-video receivers, multichannel amplifiers and automotive applications. The products are based on a proprietary signal-processing engine that supports adaptive sample rate conversion for most audio signal interfaces.

As recently as last October, at the annual Audio Engineering Society meeting, a panel of industry experts “thought it was impossible to achieve real-time digital feedback,” said Skip Taylor, the company's chief technology officer. But D2Audio's “closed-loop technology delivers performance that is not possible to achieve in open-loop implementations,” he said.