Featuring APIs, version 1.1 of the two royalty-free standards were championed by the organization as advancements in mobile computing for developers. "The key things about these new APIs is they should enable hardware acceleration and they are cross-platform," said Khronos President Neil Trevett, who also is vice president of mobile content at Nvidia, during a Khronos event in San Jose Jose, Calif. Khronos is an industry consortium developing standards for capabilities such as graphics and dynamic media on platforms and devices.

OpenSL ES, for Open Sound Language, Embedded System, is "an API for  you to harness advanced audio in a mobile device," such as a phone or tablet, Trevett said. "Without this, the audio API domain is very fragmented," with developers having to use different APIs on different systems.  

OpenSL ES 1.1 enables "psychoacoustically" enhanced 3D audio across a range of applications, such as gaming, video conferencing, music, and ringtones, Khronos said. It also offers advanced stereo and MIDI functionality.

Khronos has scored a critical victory for OpenSL ES 1.1 in that is has the support of Google Android.  "Obviously, Android adoption is a pretty significant win," Trevett said. Version 1.1 enables  high-end 3D environmental audio, providing use cases like a soundscape in which headphones could be used for positioning audio objects in 3D games.