ESS AudioDrive

ESS Technology Incorporated is a private manufacturer of computer multimedia products, Audio DACs and ADCs based in Fremont, California with R&D centers in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada and Beijing, China. It was founded by Forrest Mozer in 1983. Robert L. Blair is the CEO and President of the company.

Historically, ESS Technology was most famous for their line of Audiodrive chips for audio cards. Now they are known for their line of Sabre DAC and ADC products.

History

ESS Technologies was founded in 1983 as Electronic Speech Systems, by Professor Forrest Mozer, a space physicist at the University of California, Berkeley and Todd Mozer, Forrest Mozer's son, and Joe Costello, the former manager of National Semiconductors Digitalker line of talking chips. Costello left soon after the formation and started Cadence Designs with his former boss from National. Fred Chan VLSI designer and software engineer, in Berkeley, California, joined in 1985, and took over running the company in 1986 when Todd Mozer left for graduate school.

The company was created at least partially as a way to market Mozer's speech synthesis system (described in US patents 4,214,125, 4,433,434 and 4,435,831) after his (3-year, summer 1978 to summer 1981, extended) contract with National Semiconductor expired in 1983 or so.

Electronic Speech Systems produced synthetic speech for, among other things, home computer systems like the Commodore 64. Within the hardware limitations of that time, ESS used Mozer's technology, in software, to produce realistic-sounding voices that often became the boilerplate for the respective games. Two popular sound bites from the Commodore 64 were "He slimed me!!" from ''Ghostbusters'' and Elvin Atombender's "Another visitor. Stay a while—stay forever!" in the original ''Impossible Mission''.

At some point, the company moved from Berkeley to Fremont, California. Around that time, the company was renamed to ESS Technology.

Later, in 1994, Forrest Mozer's son Todd Mozer, an ESS employee, branched off and started his own company called Sensory Circuits Inc, later Sensory, Inc. to market speech recognition technology.

In the mid-1990s, ESS started working on making PC audio, and later, video chips, and created the Audiodrive line, used in hundreds of different products. Audiodrive chips were at least nominally Creative Sound Blaster Pro compatible. Many Audiodrive chips also featured in-house developed, OPL3-compatible FM synthesizers (branded ESFM Synthesizers). These synthesizers were often reasonably faithful to the Yamaha OPL3 chip, which was an important feature for the time as some competing solutions, including Creative's own CQM synthesis featured in later ISA Sound Blaster compatibles, offered sub-par FM sound quality. Some PCI-interface Audiodrives (namely the ES1938 Solo-1) also provided legacy DOS compatibility through Distributed DMA and the SB-Link interface.

In 2001 ESS acquired a small Kelowna design company (SAS) run by Martin Mallinson and continues R&D operations in Kelowna. The Kelowna R&D Center developed the Sabre range of DAC and ADC products that are used in many audio systems and cell phones.

Founders

Forrest Mozer continues his research work at the University of California, these days as Associate Director of Space Sciences. He was awarded EGU Hannes Alfven Medallist 2004 for his work in electrical field measurement and space plasma and also was involved in building the microphone to record sounds from the Mars Lander. He is a member of the board of directors of Sensory, Inc.

Fred Chan held a number of positions at ESS, and was CEO of Vialta, an internet offshoot of ESS, until his stepping down on July 18, 2007, to pursue philanthropic interests.

Games featuring ESS-speech

* ''Fisher Price Jungle Book Reading'' (Apple II, 19??)
* ''Impossible Mission'' (C64, 1984)
* ''Ghostbusters'' (C64, 1984)
* ''Cave of the Word Wizard'' (C64, 1984)
* ''Talking Teacher'' (C64, 1985)
* ''Kennedy Approach'' (C64, 1985)
* ''Desert Fox'' (C64, 1985)
* ''Beach Head II'' (C64, 1985)
* ''221b Baker Street'' (C64, 1986)
* ''Solo Flight'' (C64, 1986)
* '' Big Bird's Hide and Speak'' (NES, 1990)
* ''Mickey's Jigsaw Puzzles'' (DOS, 1991)

Products

* ES1868 AudioDrive
* ES9218P SABRE high fidelity system-on-chip; 32-bit stereo mobile digital-to-analog converter with 2 Volt headphone amplifier.

Present day

Most recently, ESS SABRE DACs are used in the LG V10 smartphone, with a quad DAC configuration present in the V10's successor LG V20. A slightly upgraded version of the same DAC in the V20, the SABRE ES9218P, is used in the V30 as well as the V40 ThinQ. The ESS9038Pro is their flagship and competes against Japanese AKM (Asahi Kasei Microdevices) AK4499EXEQ and American Cirrus Logic CS43131 for a share of the market. ESS and AKM dominate the desktop audiophile devices including external DACs and integrated all in one DAC/Amp devices. Meanwhile Cirrus Logic dominates the portable device market, Apple Inc is its number one customer accounting for approximately 89% of its chip sales in 2025.

The luxury Sennheiser HE 1 electrostatic headphone utilizes 8 internal DACs of the SABRE ES9018.

See also

* Covox Speech Thing

References

External links

Mediaplayer with most game speech samples from ESS







{{DEFAULTSORT:Ess Technology
Technology companies established in 1984
Computer companies established in 1984
Companies based in Berkeley, California
Companies based in Fremont, California
Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Computer companies of the United States
Computer hardware companies