Industry Expert Blogs

Since the MIPI Alliance introduced MIPI SoundWire® in 2014, manufacturers have taken advantage of the common and scalable audio interface to bring advanced audio features to a wide range of mobile, PCs and other devices. Now, MIPI is bringing even more flexibility to the specification with SoundWire v1.2, available now to MIPI members.

SoundWire was created to give system developers a comprehensive interface for transporting audio and control data to audio peripherals in smartphones, tablets, PCs, wearables, connected cars and IoT devices. It offers an alternative to the fragmented interfaces that had been available for these different types of systems. SoundWire has allowed developers to create simple, low-cost audio devices without the overhead of legacy interfaces. It has also helped them add intelligence to audio devices without unnecessary software complexity in order to bring these products to market more quickly and at lower cost.

The specification allows for multiple audio peripherals on one link and supports a variety of topologies. In addition to enabling the connection with low-cost simple devices such as microphones or amplifiers, it also enables the integration of more advanced microphones, speakers and amplifiers. Further, SoundWire can also be used to implement speaker protection, noise cancellation, microphone power and performance control, and other capabilities.