LONDON — ARC International (St. Albans, England) has bought, for $6.5 million, California based Sonic Focus, Inc., a company specializing in audio enhancement technology.

Sonic Focus, has achieved design wins in a number of desktop PCs and laptops, and currently is designed into a wide range of consumer electronics products.

ARC says that together with technologies from previous acquisitions, Sonic Focus's audio enhancement software builds will allow it to bring higher quality audio and video to designers of consumer electronics gear.

For financial year 2007, Sonic Focus operations were breakeven with approximately $1.2 million in revenue. The acquisition is not expected to negatively impact ARC's 2008 operating results.

ARC has been very much in acquisitive mode over the past two years, having bought companies such as Tenison Technology EDA Ltd, which focuses on modeling, simulation and verification products to predict critical metrics of an SoC before the design is sent for manufacture; Teja Technologies, which has brought to market tools and multicore software platforms; and Alarity, which develops codec software, firmware and multimedia architectures.

Carl Schlachte, president and CEO of ARC International, said, : "The acquisition of Sonic Focus enhances ARC's strategy of increasing its customer base and revenues by delivering one of the highest value elements of an audio enabled device - sound enhancement software. Sonic Focus's established revenue stream and growing customer list of leading consumer OEMs will complement ARC's financial and product goals." Tom Paddock, president and CEO of Sonic Focus, will join ARC as the Vice President of Audio Systems. Of the purchase price, $1.5 million will be paid in ARC International ordinary shares over two and a half years based upon achievement of certain milestones. The cash element will be paid from existing cash balances.