[sdiy] CoolAudio chips

[Eric Brombaugh]

Jay Schwichtenberg wrote:

> A number of manufactures license the design and get the mask. What they do
> to it after they get it is another story. Some tweak it to make it easier to
> manufacture in their fabs or cost reduce it.

True - a lot of this takes place on 'jelly-bean' commodity parts. 
Contract manufacturing, second sourcing and continuing obsolete lines is 
an interesting niche market in the chip business.

> Still as mentioned previously this is a branch of Behringer which is on my
> personal black list (rip-off lawsuits and the 3 products that I bought of
> theirs failed).
> 
> What I find interesting is that they bought the company from Intersil.
> 
> <http://www.pro-music-news.com/html/02/e00726be.htm>

Interesting! I worked for Intersil at that time (2000) and they were 
trimming back their product portfolio to narrow the corporate focus, but 
they didn't sell a 'company'. They sold manufacturing rights, patents, 
etc. to a small product line of class-D audio amplifier chips that they 
had developed and nick-named 'CoolAudio'.

It looks like Behringer took those designs and built up a company around 
them. Compare the logos from the Behringer ad copy for their CoolAudio 
amplifiers:

http://www.behringer.com/PMHseries/coolaudio.cfm?lang=ENG

with the CoolAudio Semiconductor website:

http://www.coolaudio-semicon.com/

Looks like a match to me, but if you dig around on the CoolAudio 
Semiconductor website you won't find any mention of Behringer. Either 
they're downplaying the connection, or Behringer spun them off...

Eric