SADiE and Apogee Announce Joint Converter Development

July 10, 1998 -- Apogee Electronics of Santa Monica, California, and Studio Audio & Video Ltd (SADiE) of Cambridge, England, are pleased to introduce the next step in their ongoing collaboration in the digital audio workstation environment. The two companies have announced the development of a new digital conversion system designed to integrate fully with SADiE's digital audio production systems.

"Our two companies have been working together for almost a year now," said Joe Bull of Studio Audio. "The initial result of our collaboration, the UV22® plug-in for our workstations, has been extremely successful since its launch last year," he commented. "This new project is the latest phase in our collaboration," he went on.

The new conversion system will be derived from Apogee's popular and highly successful AD-8000 8-channel, 24-bit converter, with I/O and other system features fully integrated into the SADiE environment. "The new converter will give us a true 24-bit data path through the whole system," Bull stated. "In addition, we have UV22 and Soft Limit® available on each channel, without eating up any DSP power." UV22 is Apogee's proprietary word-length reduction system for maintaining high-resolution digital quality while reducing the digital word length to 16 or 20-bit for CD, DVD and other media; Soft Limit provides added punch resembling traditional analog tape compression, while reducing the incidence of digital 'overs'.

"Being based on our AD-8000, the new system will offer SADiE owners easy access to a growing range of digital interfaces, in addition to full 24-bit A/D and D/A facilities," said Apogee's President, Paul Rice. "AMBus cards enable audio material to be interchanged directly with ADAT, TDIF (Tascam) and other systems. In fact," Rice went on, "fully loaded, the system will support over 40 simultaneous digital outputs," he commented.

"We are very pleased to see this extension of our relationship with SADiE," Rice noted. "They have a well established international reputation in the digital audio workstation environment, and the collaboration allows us to provide SADiE owners with the highest possible conversion quality," said Rice.

"The converter also gives us superior digital sync capabilities," Joe Bull commented, "thanks to Apogee's patented Low-Jitter Clock and an extensive range of synchronization options. It means that the converter can become the clock reference for the entire studio or editing suite," he pointed out.

"Another of the reasons we wanted to build a closer relationship with Apogee," Bull went on, "is that Apogee's converters and digital technology are widely regarded as the best available - the 'creme de la creme' so to speak," he noted. "Apogee has just the type of quality marque that makes an ideal pairing with SADiE," he concluded. "It's truly a mutually beneficial arrangement."

UV22 and Soft Limit are registered trademarks of Apogee Electronics Corporation.

Studio Audio and Video (SADiE) Inc can be contacted at 1808 West End Avenue, Suite 119, Nashville, TN, 37208.