Marantz Ships Home Theater Receiver With SRS TruSurround Headphone Technology

Sept. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Continuing to lead the advancement of home theater technology, SRS Labs today announced that its surround sound headphone technology, TruSurround Headphone is featured in new A/V receiver models from leading home theater supplier, Marantz America.

Marantz continues to include SRS Labs' advanced 6.1 surround decoder technology, Circle Surround II (CS II), in its receivers, but has now increased their use of SRS Labs' technology and added the TruSurround Headphone technology to its new 2004 models SR5400, SR6400 and SR7400, considered by many industry experts to be among the top-of-the-line in home theater A/V receivers. The addition of TruSurround Headphone in the 2004 product line represents the first integration of the technology in the A/V receiver market, providing a considerable marketplace advantage for Marantz, as consumers continue to demand the very best quality and innovation in home theater products.

As recently as August of this year, HiVi magazine, a very well respected and popular electronics publication in Japan, rated SRS Labs' TruSurround technology the best virtual surround sound solution currently available. These accolades are echoing with western product reviewers as well, such as CoolMacintosh.com, "TruSurround really made a difference by producing a feeling of surround sound, especially with sounds moving from one side to the other."

TruSurround Headphone is an optimized version of SRS Labs' popular TruSurround technology and virtualizes multichannel content, such as those found in a DVD, and produces an immersive, spacious and compelling surround sound experience over regular headphones. This new technology is backward compatible to stereo, so if the content is not a multichannel source, such as a CD or an older videocassette, the listening experience will still be enhanced with a surround sound experience.

Kevin Zarow, director of marketing for Marantz says, "Incorporating CS II and TruSurround Headphone into our newest receivers proves once again our level of commitment to include the most advanced technology features in our products. We are proud to continue to work with SRS Labs to bring their versatile, next generation surround sound technology to our customers."

"We are pleased to see our TruSurround Headphone technology being adopted by superior brand names such as Marantz for their high performance receivers," said Ted Franceschi, general manager and executive vice president of licensing for SRS Labs. "This latest collaboration once again proves Marantz' commitment to its customers by forging ahead with the very latest technologies in its products."

About TruSurround Headphone
SRS TruSurround Headphone, based on the patented TruSurround system, is a technology specifically refined for headphones that repositions the sound from inside the listener's head to outside the listener's ears, creating a more natural listening experience without relying on special recording techniques or manipulation of the audio signal by phase shift or time delay. While regular sized speakers have the advantage of being optimally placed in a room and rarely move, headphones are almost exactly the opposite, presenting several difficult technical challenges for optimizing both sound placement and quality from smaller speakers. TruSurround Headphone solves these issues, providing a powerful and engaging listening experience from regular headphones that must be heard to be believed.

About TruSurround
TruSurround is the established standard for the virtualization of 5.1 surround sound over two-speaker systems and has been featured in over 15 million consumer hardware products globally including products made by Hughes Network Systems, Matsushita, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Philips, Pioneer, Sony, Thomson Consumer Electronics, and Toshiba Corporation. The next generation TruSurround XT was released in November 2001 and includes SRS Dialog Clarity, which improves the intelligibility and clarity of center channel information, and SRS TruBass, which uses patented psychoacoustic techniques to increase bass performance from any playback system, including those with a subwoofer of any size.

About Circle Surround and Circle Surround II
SRS Circle Surround is a patented and highly versatile multichannel audio format that supports a wide range of surround sound creation and playback applications. Circle Surround provides the capability to encode up to 6.1 channels of audio for transmission or storage over standard two-channel carriers such as CD and stereo broadcasts. It is backward compatible with mono, stereo and most matrix surround decoders, with playback performance subject to the limitations of the specific decoder; however, optimal results are achieved with a Circle Surround decoder.

Current broadcasters include ABC, CBS, NBC, ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN HD, FOX, FX, TNT, PBS and over a dozen programs including the 2003 Tony Awards, 2003 ESPY Awards, X Games, NFL and NBA broadcasts. The CS format is the optimum surround solution for television because it enables any network currently telecasting in stereo to now deliver up to 6.1-channel surround sound to its viewers with no change to the distribution or broadcast infrastructure.

Circle Surround decoding is capable of delivering up to 6.1 channels of audio from stereo, matrix encoded or CS-encoded material, while its successor, Circle Surround II is an even more versatile multichannel decoder, capable of delivering a high performance, 6.1 experience from mono material. CS II technology features patented post-processing techniques, SRS Dialog Clarity and TruBass, to enhance the surround sound experience.

The Circle Surround format is capable of transforming CDs, VHS tapes, AM/FM radio or MP3s into incredibly life-like surround sound. It dynamically separates instruments, vocals, and even crowd noises for a multichannel surround experience that rivals studio quality surround remastering. To date, Circle Surround decoding has been incorporated by leading hardware and software manufacturers including: Kenwood, Marantz, Theta Digital, Accuphase, Jaton, M-Audio, Orion Studios and Smart Devices.

For more information about SRS Labs, Inc. please visit www.srslabs.com .

Source: SRS Labs, Inc.

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