Single chip handles all CD audio player functions

Philips is claiming outstanding performance in audio and playability for its new low-cost CD audio semiconductor solution.

Philips is claiming outstanding performance in audio and playability for its new low-cost CD audio semiconductor solution.

The SAA7824 chip enables manufacturers of CD audio players to refine their product range by incorporating a greater number of combined features while dramatically reducing the number of external components.

The chip, designed by the semiconductor division of Philips, offers a superior solution in terms of total system cost, playability and support compared to other solutions on the market today.

In developing the SAA7824 chip, Philips focused on the needs of CD audio player manufacturers and built a solution adapted for their requirements.

With a different system partitioning to other products currently on the market, the SAA7824 chip is integrated purely on the CD side, allowing it to be used with both big and small microcontrollers - enabling CD player manufacturers to build it into their complete range.

This keeps software overheads low.

It offers the lowest in class external component count in the industry, keeping PCB size and cost to a minimum.

"The SAA7824 semiconductor solution is a full system in itself - a complete CD player in a chip, along with the servomotor driver and the control of the CD system which is generally carried out by a microcontroller", said Charles Limonard, marketing manager for Audio and Video Products at Philips Semiconductors.

"CD audio is a very mature market, but we have come up with a distinctive solution.

We have a range of reference designs, including the firmware and we can propose or design a complete PCB for the customer, which can be taken into mass production without making any changes".

With its innovative Windows-based hardware development and debug tool, Philips has created a total solution package.

This package furnishes SAA7824 customers with a support tool, which can be used during the hardware development phase, independent of the software development, thus expediting the time it takes to commence production and accelerating the time to market.

The SAA7824 chip offers a digital servo, CD decoder, DAC, digital filter, headphone amplifier and a fully integrated preamplifier and laser driver.

The preamplifier supports both voltage and current inputs, mechanism styles and offset compensation for mechanism signals.

Other features include CD-text decoder, digital volume control, and power-save modes such as laser power and driver mute.

Samples are available now and the chips are available from April 2002.

Back to top