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For Immediate Release

MAJOR PERFORMANCE ADVANCE FOR AUDIOSCIENCE PCI EXPRESS COBRANET ADAPTERS
Customer Request Drives Development of Low Latency ASIO CobraNet Interface

NEWCASTLE, DE (March 31, 2011) – AudioScience, Inc., a leader of professional audio peripherals for the broadcast and installed sound industries, fulfills a specialized customer requirement by creating a low latency CobraNet interface to the PC for Audio Stream Input/Output (ASIO) applications.

With driver release 4.06, the ASI5316 and ASI5308 CobraNet adapters support sample-accurate multiple card synchronization and low latency capability. The ASI5316 has 16 CobraNet channels per adapter or 128 channels when 8 adapters are installed; the ASI5308 has half as many CobraNet channels. Total latency from an analog input on an ASI2416; AudioScience's 1U CobraNet device, using CobraNet (running at 1.33 ms latency) into an ASI5316/ASI5308, through an ASIO application and back out the ASI5316/ASI5308 to the ASI2416 analog output is 13.8ms.

"Imagine being able to leverage readily available ASIO PC plugins and processing blocks live in a low latency multi-channel CobraNet system," says Richard Gross, president of AudioScience. "Combined with sample accurate synchronization across up to eight ASI5316s, users can process scores of audio channels." Gross further elaborates, "The low 13.8ms round-trip audio latency is useful for live processing because it allows custom PC based audio processing before feeding the audio back to user's headphones."

The low latency functionality is provided through the ASIO programming interface in drivers 4.06.00 and later for Windows 7 (32 and 64bit), XP, and Server 2008/2003. In addition, ASI5316/ASI5308 hardware revision F0 and above will be required; they will be available starting in May.  In later driver releases, AudioScience will also be adding low latency ASIO support to several of their non-CobraNet adapters.  Call AudioScience for release information.