SRS Labs Demonstrates Audio Enhancement for Gaming Devices at E3

Company's Licensable CS-I and WOW Audio Technologies and Decoder Hardware Help Take PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance (GBA) and Other Popular Console and Computer Games to a New, More Immersive Level May 16 /PRNewswire/ -- SRS Labs, Inc. will showcase its proprietary Circle Surround Interactive(TM) (CS-I(TM)) and WOW(TM) technologies for the game market at the 7th Annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3 2001) at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Kentia Hall, booth #6543. Demonstrations will be held May 17-19, 2001 and will include a first look at CS-I real-time decoder hardware running on a PlayStation 2 and on a PC. CS-I, among other benefits, allows developers to steer audio tracks and sound effects in real-time to front and rear speakers with a virtual center channel based on the actions of the player. The company will also demonstrate its popular WOW technology applied to the new Game Boy Advance and its award-winning WOW Thing(TM) for Computers and WOW Thing(TM) for Game Consoles.

"Our complementary relationships with Sunsoft, Metrowerks and others, has laid a solid foundation for establishing new business opportunities in the gaming market," said Joanna Skrdlant, Director of Marketing for SRS Labs. "At E3 we hope to seek out additional synergistic partnerships with gaming software and hardware developers to help advance the quality and importance of audio in gaming and develop new enabling technologies that may prove beneficial to developers and gamers alike."

Additionally, SRS Labs will demonstrate its multi-channel virtualization technology, TruSurround(TM), which creates a virtual surround sound effect from multi-channel audio. TruSurround, for example, can create a realistic sounding virtual surround sound effect from a DVD movie played from a PlayStation 2 over a television with just two speakers.

SRS Labs is currently working with Sunsoft who distributes a CS-I decoder hardware product under the name SoundCircle(TM). Sunsoft is already shipping SoundCircle in Japan. For game developers, SRS Labs is working with Metrowerks to deliver CS-I and other audio and voice technologies to developers as an add-on to Metrowerks' popular CodeWarrior(TM) development software series for platforms such as Sony's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's GameCube.

CS-I enables game developers to easily create 4.1 multi-channel surround sound games that are stored as stereo files on the game medium saving large amounts of precious disc space for video. When the CS-I game is played, a decoder hardware product attached to the game console or computer will create the 4.1 multi-channel surround sound for a gaming experience that is incredibly immersive. Players without the CS-I decoder will hear standard stereo. Players with CS-I decoders also may play standard stereo games in multi-channel surround format as the CS-I technology can convert stereo into discrete multi-channel surround sound playback as the game is being played. CS-I can also enable multi-channel surround sound (4.1) gaming over the Internet using the same bandwidth as stereo.

E3 is the world's largest trade event exclusively dedicated to showcasing interactive entertainment and educational software and related products. Each year, the expo attracts tens of thousands of retailers, developers, investors, distributors and media representatives from across the U.S. and hundreds of other countries.

About Circle Surround-Interactive
SRS Labs' CS-I is based on the Company's multi-channel audio enabling technology, Circle Surround(TM), originally developed to playback stereo audio through a multi-channel speaker system creating a more realistic 5.1 audio experience. CS-I is a new encoding technology that will allow game developers to steer the audio tracks and sound effects in real-time within a game based on the actions of the player. It also enables multi-channel audio tracks to be streamed over low-bandwidth because it can mix down the Circle Surround encoded content to just two channels and then decode it on the client-side for multi-channel playback.

About SRS Labs, Inc.
SRS Labs is the world's leading provider of audio and voice enhancement technology solutions. SRS Labs' business consists of licensing audio and voice technologies to makers of consumer electronics, telecommunications equipment, game developers, and wireless and cellular phone manufacturers and also markets products for semi-pro and professional audio signal processing. The Company's Hong Kong-based subsidiary, ValenceTech is a fabless award- winning leader in the design, manufacturing and distribution of components, integrated circuits, and sub-assemblies. The Company's subsidiary, SRSWOWCast Technologies, licenses audio and voice technologies for broadcasting and streaming media. For more information, visit http://www.srslabs.com.

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SOURCE SRS Labs, Inc.