SiLabs has dev kit for Class D audio amplifiers

Based around the firm's ARM Cortex-M3 cored SiM3U1xx mcus, the platform is designed to reduce the cost and complexity of adding voice, sound clips and streaming audio. "With our new Class D ToolStick, developers can quickly and easily add Class D audio capabilities and capacitive touch buttons and sliders to any 32bit embedded product using our SiM3U1xx mcus," said the company's director of marketing, Keith Odland. The ToolStick is aimed at personal medical devices, fitness equipment, high end toys and small appliances, as well as more sophisticated voice prompts, music and sound clips. Developers can add capacitive touch buttons and sliders to their 32bit embedded systems or use the SiM3U1xx mcu's high drive I/Os with pwm to directly drive other components such as small motors, eliminating the need for separate power field effect transistors. The ToolStick provides four modes of operation: sampling data from a portable music player using the mcu's on chip a/d converters, usb audio streaming from a pc, playing pre recorded sound clips stored from on chip flash memory using a common audio compression algorithm, and a voice recorder that stores data in flash using an audio compression algorithm.