Cypress's PSoCR 3 Device Enables Bit-Perfect Digital Audio with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

The products rely on the PSoC 3 device to seamlessly manage the digital audio interface and handle Apple’s proprietary MFi (Made for iPod, iPhone, and iPad) protocol to communicate with devices using Apple’s iOS operating system.

The iM2, iM2X, and iXJ2 plug into Apple’s dock connector for iOS devices. The iM2 and iM2X each feature a pair of condenser microphones that are adjustable over 180 degrees for optimal sound capture, and they each contain a preamp that can handle up to 125 decibels for the loudest concerts and instruments. The iXJ2 provides two microphone or line inputs that can be used individually or in tandem for stereo recordings, making it ideal for video capture. Each accessory is powered by the connected iOS device and works with TASCAM’s PCM Recorder iOS app, Apple’s GarageBand, and other Core Audio compatible recording apps.

Cypress’s PSoC 3 MFi digital audio solution manages the interface between the TASCAM accessories and any iOS device via Apple’s dock connector. The designs leverage PSoC 3 to provide pristine audio recording, as well as simultaneous playback. With Cypress’s patent-pending clock synchronization and recovery scheme, PSoC 3 ensures no samples are dropped, delivering the highest quality digital audio with minimal external components at multiple audio sample rates (at standard intervals up to 24-bit audio, 48-kHz sampling rate).

“With PSoC 3’s flexible architecture and drag-and-drop MFi compatibility, we developed the iM2, iM2X, and iXJ2 to put high-quality audio recording capabilities into the hands of iPhone and iPad users,” said Shinya Yoshino, Executive Officer of Research and Development at TEAC. “The PSoC 3 MFi digital audio solution provides TEAC with an excellent springboard, enabling rapid time-to-market and a solid foundation for a broad family of music accessory products.”

“PSoC provides designers with a quick, inexpensive, fully-tested solution for accessories using Apple’s proprietary MFi interface,” said Leon Tan, marketing manager for Cypress’s MFi solutions. “With their hundreds of thousands of apps and the accessories that users can attach via the dock connector, Apple’s iOS mobile devices have become this generation’s Swiss Army knife. The iM2, iM2X, and iXJ2 exemplify how the PSoC architecture enables a range of accessories that add new capabilities to iOS devices.”

PSoC – Because Change Happens

PSoC devices employ a highly configurable system-on-chip architecture for embedded control design, offering a flash-based equivalent of a field-programmable ASIC without lead-time or NRE penalties. PSoC devices integrate configurable analog and digital circuits, controlled by an on-chip microcontroller, providing both enhanced design revision capability and component count savings. A single PSoC device can integrate as many as 100 peripheral functions saving customers design time, board space and power consumption while improving system quality and reducing system cost.

The new PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 architectures include high-precision programmable analog capability (up to 20-bit resolution for an Analog to Digital Converter) and expanded programmable digital resources integrated with powerful, industry-standard MCU cores and ample memory and communications peripherals. PSoC 3 devices are based on a high-performance, 8-bit 8051 processor, while PSoC 5 devices include a powerful 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 processor. The products provide designers with a seamless, programmable design platform, enabling easy migration from 8 to 32 bits. The robust features of these new solutions dramatically expand the applications and markets that PSoC can address, including automotive, portable medical, industrial, and many more. The PSoC 1 family is based on a cost-optimized 8-bit M8C core.