According to Tao, the ringtone engine plays current popular polyphonic MIDI ringtone formats, including "true tones," as well as MOD files and the powerful new open SKM format which uniquely supports both MIDI and audio samples in Ogg Vorbis and other compressed audio formats. In addition, the ringtone engine facilitates the incredibly rich sonic and audio experiences available through advanced software synthesis, vector audio and generative music techniques.

"For mobile end-users, ringtones and sounds represent a way to personalize mobile phones as well as enhance the overall phone experience," said Mark Spain, director of the Mobile Devices Division at Microsoft Corp. "Tao's Advanced Polyphonic Ringtone Engine illustrates the ability of Windows Mobile software for Smartphones to support powerful and creative solutions that enable compelling scenarios for developer and consumers in the areas of entertainment, creativity, personalization and multimedia."

Alan Welsman, Global Head of Games at Orange commented, "This development is not only great for ringtones, but as a suite of audio technologies, it is delivering very exciting possibilities for use by developers in creating games for the Orange SPV."

Tao says the high performance MIDI synthesizer at the heart of the ringtone engine delivers superb quality polyphony ringtones in a wide range of popular formats. A modular design approach means that plug-ins and codecs can be added as required. Ogg Vorbis or MP3 codecs, for example, allow 'true tones' to be played as samples or streams, such as the recent release of wildlife sounds from the British Library archives for use as ringtones, or music or voice recordings.

In addition to the ringtone engine, Tao also offers other licensable "plug-in" components such as synthesizers, effects, 3D audio, music engines, and visualizers. For example, the BAFTA award winning SSEYO Koan generative music engine enables "live tones," whereby ringtones can be different every time they are played.