"Lessons Learned" by Keith Weiner March 10, 2010

Keith Weiner and Erik Lorenzen founded DiamondWare in 1994. A creative programming duo combining the audiophile and the engineer. Together they forged a business to raise audio standards. The company's first product was a sound and music component for multimedia and game developers. The most efficient mixer in its time, it could run 16 voices on a 16 MHz 80386 at 6% CPU and proved to have the best hardware auto-detect, and the cleanest interface.

DiamondWare evolved to become a contract development firm for audio chipmakers, DSP companies, and also offered custom development for projects like non-standard audio device drivers and audio subsystems for other operating systems. This led to an innovative DSP pipeline that allowed arbitrary processing per stream, including parameter changes in real-time (Keith presented a paper on this at Audio Engineering Society). The company segued into the telephony business when a customer (Data Race, now defunct) asked for a device driver to provide voice audio with less than 50ms latency.

In 1998, Telephony Sound ToolKit (Tele-STK) introduced a radically more efficient means to process full duplex audio, and broke out of the conventional tradeoff of latency vs. quality of service. Data Race won best of CT Expo two years in a row with its road warrior product.

In 2000 DiamondWare began developing its first turnkey application, which is now used in military tactical intercom systems.

Today, DiamondWare demos and awards at telephony shows are an annual feature. As IP networks extend traditional telephony into new areas DiamondWare is leading with innovative mobility products like Wi-Fone and collaborative communications platforms like Palantir.

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