Product category:
Analogue and Mixed Signal ICs
News Release from: Wolfson Microelectronics | Subject: WM8900
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 12 February 2008
Audio codec and headphone driver are
united
Offers longer battery life in portable media players and multimedia handsets with reduced external component requirements.
New from Wolfson Microelectronics, the WM8900 AudioPlus smart power device combines a high-performance ultra-low-power audio codec with a Class G ground-referenced headphone driver The WM8900 offers longer battery life in portable media players and multimedia handsets with reduced external component requirements
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 13 Apr 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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The WM8900's quiescent headphone playback power consumption is under 6mW in voice mode and under 11mW in hi-fi mode.
This is ideal for extending battery life in portable audio applications and betters the quiescent power consumption of many feature rich multimedia codecs with ground referenced headphone outputs by up to 25%.
When using a typical 300mAH battery, the WM8900 solution can extend battery life by up to 11 hours during headphone music playback at a typical 2mW per channel listening level.
Wolfson has also designed the WM8900 to address cost and board space by implementing ground referenced headphone outputs that remove the need for bulky DC blocking capacitors.
The device is offered in a low-profile 0.55mm-high 40-pin QFN package, which makes the WM8900 ideal for slim, portable electronic applications.
The WM8900 Class G architecture is implemented by powering the headphone amplifier with a dual-input level-shifting intelligent charge pump.
The charge pump generates both the positive and negative power supply rails, ground referencing the headphone outputs.
Automatic control of the charge pump maintains the most power efficient operating state during headphone playback.
This is done with no intervention required from the operator or host software.
The ground-referenced Class G headphone amplifier also eliminates many sources of pops and clicks during power up, power down, mute and unmute to deliver the high quality audio performance expected by today's consumer.
Nat Edington, VP of marketing at Wolfson comments: "The WM8900 introduces Class G amplifier technology as a means to deliver ultra-low-power ground-referenced headphone drive on a hi-fi audio codec".
"The device is Wolfson's latest low power, high performance audio codec and helps designers of portable media players and multimedia handsets to meet the challenge of delivering longer battery life with reduced system cost".
The WM8900 is available for sampling now in a 40-pin, 5 x 5 x 0.55mm QFN package.
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