Note that Mobileer Inc is no longer accepting new customers.
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FAQGeneral QuestionsTechnical Questions
Do you have an evaluation kit available?Yes. The evaluation kit contains Windows programs that can be used to play MIDI files using our software engine. It also contains programmer's documentation and some sample MIDI files. Please contact us if you are interested. What technical support do you provide?The source code is very portable and should compile quickly on your platform. We provide telephone and email support to help you to integrate the ME software with your audio system software. We can also provide general purpose modifications to the code and additional ringtones on request. Software upgrades and technical support are included under terms specified in the license. Onsite technical support or custom software modifications can be provided for an hourly fee. What platforms do you run on?The software was designed for embedded 32 bit CPUs such as ARM or MIPS. It is written in very portable 'C' code and should run on any CPU that supports 32 bit integer operations. It has been deployed on ARM7, ARM9, TI OMAP, Blackfin DSP and other CPUs. It has run under Linux, Palm OS, Windows Mobile, uCOS and other operating systems. What do you provide with your product?We provide 'C' source code or libraries for the synthesis engine, example code, documentation and programming tutorials, song data files for testing or production, QA data and software suite. Each new customer is also provided with a custom orchestra for their platform. How many voices can you generate?Polyphonic ringtones use one voice for each note of an instrument that plays simultaneously. For example, a song that had 3 note piano chords, a violin, and a snare drum would require 5 voices. The maximum number of voices is a function of the CPU speed and the output sample rate. We can provide detailed benchmarks for specific CPUs under NDA. How many voices is enough?A low cost phone could include a set of simple ringtones in ROM and get by with a maximum 4 to 8 voices. A phone that allowed users to download ringtones from the net should support at leat 24 voice and 32 is preferred. It is very rare for a song to use more than 40 voices. If a song tries to use more voices than are available then old notes that have almost died away are recycled ("stolen"). Thus new notes are always heard. How easy is it to port the ringtone engine to our platform?The ringtone engine itself uses no system dependant calls and is very portable. Integration of the ME software involves building the portable 'C' code for your system, connecting the ME output to your audio device driver, and passing music files, eg. ringtones, or MIDI commands to the ME software. Does your product include support for downloading and installing ringtones?That is a network function rather than a sound function. It is also specific to the network protocols supported by your devices. We do not provide network transaction software so the file downloading and web software would need to be provided by your company. If, however, you would like us to develop downloading software based on your specification please contact us for further discussion. What is the format of the ring tones you can provide?Mobileer provides both SMF (Standard MIDI Files) in Format 1 and Mobile XMF ringtones. They use the General MIDI standard for instruments. Can the software be split, for example, between a RISC CPU and a DSP?Some mobile devices are designed with a slow RISC processor and a DSP. The software can be divided so that the RISC CPU does the SMF and MXMF parsing and the DSP does the audio synthesis.
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