AudioCodes (NASDAQ:AUDC), today announced general availability of the Transcoding Resource Blade (TRB) family of blade products. The TRB products support IP to IP conversion of a wide range of standard and low bit-rate (LBR) coders, including:  G.711, G.726, G.727, G.723.1, G.729.a, iLBC, GSM-FR, GSM-EFR, AMR and others. Alan Percy from Audiocodes is here at ITEXPO (he's a keynoter) and I ran into him last night and we talked for a bit. (Audiocodes is also exhibiting at the show.) I'm surprised Alan didn't tell me about this news being announced today.

In any event, the new line of Transcoding Resource Blade products addresses the IMS market's needs for complex wireline and wireless VoIP transcoding. In addition to voice coders, the TRB family also supports encryption/decryption, conversion of G.711 fax to T.38 and a number of DTMF conversions. Transcoding features are controlled via SIP, MGCP or via the high-performance AudioCodes API.

"One of the widely understood challenges of the IMS architecture and Peer-to-Peer VoIP applications is transcoding," said Sharone Ben-Levi, Vice President of Marketing, Blade Business Line at AudioCodes. "The TRB family of blades solves this challenge by offering a range of high-performance, low-latency IP to IP transcoding solutions that are vastly more efficient than host-based solutions."

The TRB product family is available today in a number of blade form factors and densities, including:

IPM-260/TRB - PCI form factor, supporting up to 120 transcoding sessions

IPM-1610/TRB - cPCI form factor, up to 240 transcoding sessions

IPM-6310/TRB - cPCI form factor, up to 1008 transcoding sessions

In addition to the above PCI and cPCI version, an AdvancedTCA form factor product is planned for early 2007.