The AD73311L is a complete front-end processor for general purpose applications including speech and telephony. It features a 16-bit A/D conversion channel and a 16-bit D/A conversion channel. Each channel provides 70 dB signal-to-noise ratio over a voiceband signal bandwidth. The final channel bandwidth can be reduced, and signal-to-noise ratio improved, by external digital filtering in a DSP engine. The AD73311L is suitable for a variety of applications in the speech and telephony area, including low bit rate, high quality compression, speech enhancement, recognition and synthesis. The low group delay characteristic of the part makes it suitable for single or multichannel active control applications. The gains of the A/D and D/A conversion channels are programmable over 38 dB and 21 dB ranges respectively. An on-chip reference voltage is included to allow single supply operation. A serial port (SPORT) allows easy interfacing of single or cascaded devices to industry standard DSP engines. The AD73311L is available in 20-lead SOIC, SSOP and TSSOP packages.