CSR Licenses AptX® Low Latency Codec To Mad Catz® For New Family Of Bluetooth® Wireless Gaming Headsets

CSR plc (LSE: CSR; NASDAQ: CSRE) today announced that Mad Catz Interactive (NYSE MKT: MCZ) has signed a multi-year licensing agreement to use the CSR aptX® Low Latency audio codec, expected to feature in a new family of ‘GameSmart’ headsets that Mad Catz plans to introduce in the coming months. The new headsets are expected to break the barrier between the wireless audio and gaming worlds, enabling consumers to use one headset that works equally well whether using their tablets, smartphones, laptops or other Bluetooth-equipped devices to play action games, listen to their favourite music or watch movies and videos.

“This breakthrough CSR aptX technology is enabling us to create a new category of high-performance GameSmart wireless headsets that we know will deliver audiophile sound for games and audio alike,” said Darren Richardson, Mad Catz CEO and President. “The aptX technology allows us to deliver realistic, interactive, action-synchronised sound when gaming by eliminating the audio sync issue, while providing high-quality stereo audio over Bluetooth.”

High-quality Bluetooth audio has an inherent latency of more than 150 ms. While this can be compensated for in various ways to ensure that the lips match the speech when watching a movie, where this delay is constant, the gun shots, bomb blasts and other intermittent and unpredictable sound effects in gaming environments make this kind of compensation unfeasible. For action-synchronised sound when gaming, this delay must be less than the 40 ms recommended for audio-video (AV) applications. CSR aptX Low Latency for Bluetooth reduces the latency to just 32 ms, which is well under this limit.

“We welcome Mad Catz into the aptX ecosystem, and congratulate them for their vision and innovation in being first to recognise and fulfill the need for this new breed of wireless headsets,” said Jonny McClintock, Director of aptX Sales and Marketing at CSR. “With more and more people using their smartphones and tablets to play games, in addition to other more traditional audiovisual entertainment, many of them will be turning to high-performance wireless headsets, like those Mad Catz will be introducing, that can work equally well for high-fidelity stereo audio and gaming applications.”

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