Audio ADC enables far-field voice capture at four times the distance

The device is part of a new family of three TI Burr-Brown audio ADCs that enable low-distortion audio recordings in loud environments, along with far-field, high-fidelity recordings in any environment.

Smart home systems face challenges with far-field audio capture. In today’s systems, a limited number of microphones and restricted signal processing capability make it difficult to capture and understand voice commands in loud environments.

To meet this challenge, the TLV320ADC5140 enables engineers to improve audio capture from across rooms and boost recognition of soft-spoken commands in applications such as high-end smart speakers, sound bars, wireless speakers, high definition TVs, IP network cameras, teleconferencing systems and smart appliances.

The ADC, which joins the portfolio of TI Burr-Brown premium audio devices, including high-performance Class-D amplifiers, data converters and operational amplifiers, can also help engineers save system design costs by reducing the number of microphones in the array.

Key features

• Clear audio capture in any environment in beamforming systems: The TLV320ADC5140 has a built-in 120-dB dynamic range enhancer (DRE). At a system level, the DRE scheme boosts low-volume audio signals while maintaining low-distortion recordings, even at close proximity to the speaker output. The DRE also improves far-field, high-fidelity recordings in all environments.
• High-quality voice compatibility with premium microphones: The TLV320ADC5140 is the first ADC that fully supports the latest high signal-to-noise-ratio microphones with greater than 106-dB dynamic range.
• Unprecedented integration to enable versatile system design: Allowing for system flexibility with conversion of as many as four analog or eight digital microphones (or a combination thereof), the TLV320ADC5140 also includes programmable features such as gain and phase calibration to equalise microphone-array mismatches. Other features include a programmable gain amplifier, high-pass filters, channel mixing, and linear phase or ultra-low-latency decimation filters.
• Small size with low system power consumption: Using built-in features of the TLV320ADC5140, engineers can offload digital signal processing tasks, allowing them to shrink their designs without sacrificing system reliability. Power consumption is only 9.5mW per channel at 48kHz.

The TLV320ADC5140 is available now through the TI store. Offered in four by four millimetres, 24-pin wafer quad flatpack no-lead (WQFN) packaging, it is priced at $2.99 in 1,000-unit quantities. The TLV320ADC5140 quad-channel 768kHz TI Burr-Brown audio ADC evaluation module, ADC5140EVM-PDK, is available for $199 in limited quantities.