The first time I heard of Dirac was at Xiaomi's Mi 3 launch event in India all the way back in 2014. Back then, Xiaomi was an unknown Chinese manufacturer that was taking the first step into a foreign market. Hugo Barra was on hand to showcase the device, as were executives from Flipkart, which nabbed exclusive rights to sell the phone in the subcontinent. The Dirac came up during the Q&A when Barra was asked about the audio prowess of the Mi 3. That was an interesting question as the Mi 3 was the first device borne out of Xiaomi's collaboration with Dirac. Over the years, the two brands have worked closely together in fine-tuning the audio on Xiaomi's phones. Here's what you need to know about Dirac, and its impact on smartphone audio. Verizon is offering the Pixel 4a for just $10/mo on new Unlimited lines

What is Dirac, and why should you care?

Dirac is named in honor of Nobel-winning British physicist Paul Dirac, whose delta function set the stage for signal processing. The company itself is based out of Sweden, and specializes in digital audio optimization. Over the years, Dirac has worked with a range of automobile manufacturers to tailor cabin acoustics in the luxury car segment, with the company's solutions ending up in models from Bentley, Volvo, BMW, and Rolls Royce. The company also works with the likes of Harman, Pioneer, Datasat, and DTS to optimize professional loudspeakers and fine-tune room acoustics for recording studios. In recent years, Dirac has turned to mobile audio, teaming up with a slew of manufacturers that include OPPO, Xiaomi, Huawei, OnePlus, and others to deliver the best possible sound from a phone's speaker. Dirac focuses on two distinct areas when it comes to optimizing phones: tuning the headphone jack, and tweaking the performance of the loudspeaker. Focusing on mobile audio tech seems like a strange move for a company like Dirac, which had primarily focused on customizing audio for home theater systems and high-end cars until five years ago. But with smartphones becoming the defacto way of listening to music on the go, the brand recognized the segment as a new avenue of growth. The foray into smartphone audio worked out for Dirac, with a majority of the company's revenues now coming from mobile audio solutions. Tailoring audio solutions for Chinese brands