Since the Sound Blaster 1.0 (circa 1990) and the Windows Sound System (circa 1995) there has not been an open standard for PC audio hardware. This led to a proliferation of different hardware register sets and drivers to support those hardware interfaces. The commonality in most of these hardware designs was the capability to perform data transfers from main memory to the digital-to-analog converter (DAC) for rendering and from analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to main memory for capturing. If there is a standardized data transfer engine that a common software component can interface with, there is still a need to identify and manipulate the features of the digital audio converters in an intelligent manner. Techniques to determine and organize this information for any digital audio converter unit and present it to an operating system are desired, since they would provide for a single driver for audio solutions that conform to a general algorithm.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds