Yamaha Announces Receiver For Computers

Yamaha Electronics Corporation has announced its first ""convergence"" product, joining conventional audio and video to computers. The new product, a ""Personal Entertainment Theater"" is a USB interface audio receiver which the company says adds home theatre enjoyment to a variety of PC applications including games, internet music, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM multimedia titles, and of course DVD-Video movies on computer. Yamaha's prototype USB Receiver is a 30 watt per channel stereo receiver which includes Virtual Dolby Digital processing as well as Yamahaís Digital Sound Field Processing and utilizes HRTF - Head Related Transfer Function - technologies. Virtual Dolby Digital uses HRTF and other manipulations to create a credible approximation of the surround effect of 5.1 channel Dolby Digital surround sound environments for the computer user. Yamaha has applied the same type of technology to its Digital Sound Field Processing surround environments. A control is included for adjusting HRTF parameters to match the system with the room acoustics and personal listening preferences. The result, says Yamaha, is a staggeringly real surround effect provided by only two speakers. The USB Receiverís computer interface is simple and provided by a USB - Universal Serial Bus - cable and it supports plug-and-play and hot plugging. Yamaha provides all the needed software. Other features of the USE Receiver include an AMIFM tuner with 40 presets, two analog inputs, S/PDIF (optical digital) input, a record output, subwoofer output, and an equalizer. Yamaha's new USE Receiver Personal Entertainment Theater is due out in the second half of 1999 with a price to be announced.For more information contact Doan Hoff at 714 522 9290 or visit the Yamaha web site at http://www.yamaha.com.