FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Announcing Open Sound System v3.9.7a CULVER CITY, CA, June 11, 2002: 4Front Technologies is announcing the availability of Open Sound System(TM) (OSS) version 3.9.7a for the following operating systems: - Linux v2.x (Intel and Alpha) - Solaris v7/v8 (Intel and Sparc) - FreeBSD v4.5 (Intel) - OpenBSD v3.1 (Intel) - NetBSD v1.5.2 (Intel) - BSD/OS v4.2 (Intel) - OpenUNIX v8 (Intel) - UnixWare v7 (Intel) - OpenServer v5 (Intel) - AIX v4/v5.1L (PowerPC) - Tru64 v5.1 (Alpha) - LynxOS v4.0 (Intel) - HP-UX 11 (PA-RISC) - VxWorks (Intel) OSS provides sound card drivers for most popular sound cards for the above operating systems. These drivers support digital audio, MIDI, Synthesizers and mixers found on sound cards. These sound drivers comply with the Open Sound System API specification. OSS provides a user-friendly GUI which makes the installation of sound drivers and configuration of sound cards extremely simple. OSS supports over 250 brand name sound cards. OSS drivers provide automatic sound card detection, Plug-n-Play support, support for PCI audio soundcards and support for full duplex audio. What's new in 3.9.7a? - 4Front Virtual Mixer now comes standard with the OSS drivers. An advanced version with builtin equalizers, loopback audio recording, individual volume control is also available with an extra licensing fee. The basic Virtual Mixer technology allows users to play upto 4 audio apps at the same time. There is no special programming required (unlike ESD or aRTsd) as the Virtual Mixer devices behave exactly like the physcal hardware devices. Virtual Mixer contains 4Front's proprietary profesional quality sample rate convertors that handle the mixing of various audio applications. - The soundconf program now provides an Audio-Self-Test option that performs basic audio tests and reports back any errors. - Under Solaris x86 and Linux, the Virtual Mixer devices are automatically used by audio applications requiring no user intervention to configure applications to use the Virtual Mixer devices. Under all other operting systems, the Virtual Mixer device needs to be specified when starting the audio application. - OSS now gives you the ability to reorder soundcards using the soundconf program. This feature is useful if there are multiple audio devices in the system and a particular device needs to be set as the default audio device. - New PCI soundcard support for LynxOS 4.0, AIX 5.1L and Tru64 5.1 - Updated drivers for VIA8233, Midiman Delta series, and other devices This version of OSS with the basic Virtual Mixer technology is available to all current licensed OSS customers at no addition cost. Virtual Mixer is not yet available for AIX and Solaris Sparc. "With the release of v3.9.7, OSS offers superior sound functionality with ease of use and rock solid stability. The best part about this release is that our customers get added functionality at no additional cost", said Dev Mazumdar, president of 4Front Technologies. For more information and to download a free time-limited evaluation version, visit 4Front's WWW site at http://www.opensound.com ABOUT 4FRONT TECHNOLOGIES: 4Front is a privately held company with development facilities in California, Finland and Sweden. 4Front's main focus is on developing audio solutions for the UNIX, Linux and embedded Systems marketplace. 4Front is the developer of Open Sound System and is released under a BSD license. Open Sound System has become the "de-facto" audio API that is now distributed with Linux and FreeBSD kernel sources and licensed by companies like SCO, Wind River Systems, and endorsed by SUN Microsystems. Open Sound System provides a cross-platform audio API with device drivers for over 250 brand name sound cards from vendors like Creative Labs, VIA, Cirrus Logic, MIDIMan, ESS Technologies, CMedia and others. More information on Open Sound System and 4Front Technologies is available at http://www.opensound.com. 4Front Technologies is also the developer of X MultiMedia System (XMMS) XMMS is developed by 4Front Technologies under the GNU Public License (GPL) and has a large world-wide developer base that contributes plugins and enahancements. XMMS is a cross platform multimedia player that support MP3, Ogg, Wave, CD, MOD, MIDI, and digital audio and Mpeg1, AVI, Mpeg2 video formats. XMMS is distributed with all the major Linux and FreeBSD distributions. It has become the de-facto media player and has won world-wide acclaim as being one of the best media players for UNIX and Linux. XMMS has won numerous awards from Slashdot, Linux Magazine, Linux Journal and others. More information on XMMS is available at http://www.xmms.org. --- xxx --- All trademarks and copyrights belong to their respective owners. Open Sound System is a trademark of 4Front Technologies. Copyright (C) 1996-2001, 4Front Technologies, All Rights Reserved. 4Front Technologies 4035 Lafayette Place, Unit F Culver City, CA 90232 USA. Tel: (310) 202 8530 E-mail: info@opensound.com Fax: (310) 202 0486 Web: http://www.opensound.com