Qualcomm announces socs for smart speakers, receivers and soundbars

Qualcomm has announced a new series of socs specifically intended for smart speakers, audio receivers and sound bars. These chips should, among other things, improve sound quality, battery life and voice control options compared to existing Qualcomm technology.

According to Qualcomm, the QCS400 series of socs brings three improvements. First of all, devices with these chips should respond faster to voice commands and voice sound should be better detected, even in noisy rooms. The manufacturer says that AI technology contributes to this.

Furthermore, there will be support for the high-end audio formats Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, so that height channels are also supported. Finally, not only should the performance and battery life of devices with a QCS400-soc improve, but the multi-channel connectivity should make it easy to connect multiple speakers together.

Several variants are coming out, including the QCS407 as the highest positioned chip in the QCS400 series. This is a quad-core processor with an Adreno 306 GPU to drive displays up to 1080p. HDMI connections and 32-channel audio are also supported, making this soc especially suitable for audio receivers and sound bars.

The QCS405 is completely similar to the QCS407, except for support for up to twelve audio channels. According to Qualcomm, this soc is especially suitable for sound bars and home theater smart speakers. Both the QCS407 and QCS405 feature two unnamed Hexagon DSPs.

The QCS404 and QCS403 intended for smart assistants and speakers lack the Adreno 306 GPU and can therefore not control screens. The QCS403 is the only one with a dual-core chip. The four different socs all support bluetooth 5.1, Zigbee and local voice recognition.

Qualcomm has not yet announced when these new QCS400 series socs will be made available to hardware manufacturers and when they will first appear in devices on the market.