WORLD'S ONLY INTERACTIVE DIGITAL MUSIC PLAYER INTRODUCED AT CES

January 5, 2001: Today, MadWaves corporation (Copenhagen, Denmark) introduced the world's only interactive digital music player at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The product - The MadPlayer - is a hand-held, multi-functional, exceptional-sounding portable music player/recorder with numerous unique features that, until now, have not existed in a single music product. The MadPlayer allows users to listen to, create, interact with, compose and transport professional-quality digital music without the need for a PC or Internet connection.
"MadPlayer completely eclipses the limited capability of current mass-produced, personal music players," said Voislav Damevski, MadWaves CEO. "With MadPlayer, we're setting a new standard by transforming the passive, listen-only digital music experience into an interactive, generative music experience. MadPlayer puts the user in total control of the music."

Unique Features At The Push Of A Button.
With a simple push of a button, similar to a video game, MadPlayer enables any user - whether or not they know anything about making music - to create their own music, then listen to it in real time, share it with others, change and store it for future use. MadPlayer also automatically generates music and plays it in real time in a multitude of genres (such as dance, techno, hip-hop or rap) which can be mixed with voice or sound samples. The unit also offers: karaoke, with LDC or TV word display; a MIDI synthesizer and 200-instrument sound bank that create and play professional digital music; skip-free playback; firmware upgrades; TV/video interface; and, virtual radio and FM station listening.

Proprietary Generative Music Technology, Combined In Single Platform With MIDI And WMA.
"This product makes music and music making accessible to everyone - from kids on the street to college students to your grandmother," said Damevski. One of the critical components that makes this possible is a user-friendly, customizable graphic interface, similar to a video game. "MadPlayer is so simple and intuitive to use, it plays like a GameBoy," said Damevski. "The ease with which people can use the graphics-driven screen and the game-like joy stick makes the music experience exciting and fun."

The other crucial factor is MadPlayer's proprietary generative music algorithm technology, which is combined in a single platform with WMA and MIDI technologies. "Traditionally, the incorporation of music into an electronic device has been limited by storage capacity, which also has limited what types of applications can be installed in a device," said Alain Georges, developer of the MadPlayer technology and managing director of dBTech, MadWaves' R&D facility in Sophia Antipolis, France, the French Silicon Valley.

"With our technology, for the first time, significant memory and processing power isn't needed to create, store, transmit or play professional-quality sounds and music. It takes only 100 to 200 bytes of memory to store each user-generated song regardless of its length, versus 10,000 times as much memory for each minute of MP3," explained Georges.

Georges noted that the MadPlayer does have MP3-type user functions. "But we don't use MP3. For functions like downloading and listening to music off the Internet, MadPlayer incorporates MicroSoft's WMA compression technology, which is twice as efficient as MP3," said Georges. "Working in conjunction with Atmel and Microsoft, we are the first to port WMA to an Atmel processor."

This frees MadWaves to provide customizable music and sounds for applications far beyond those offered today, said Damevski. "MadPlayer technology ultimately will affect PCs, wireless devices, phones, toys and many other types of digital products. The MadPlayer is only the beginning."

About MadWaves.
Founded in 1998, MadWaves designs, develops, markets and licenses software and hardware solutions that bring interactivity to digital music. The Company's products and unique technical features are the first to allow users to interactively experience digital self-composed music on non-PC music devices. MadWaves is headquartered in Copenhagen, with offices in Geneva, New York and Sophia Antipolis, France. www.madwaves.com

Source: MadWaves