An ultrasonic inspection system has been developed in response to FAA recommendations for improved inspection of titanium billet [1]. This prototype system — called Multizone — has been transitioned to the factory floor and has inspected 1,000,000+ pounds of Ti billet in 1993–94. It is a real-time, PC based platform that employs custom built analog electronics using up to 8 parallel (non-multiplexed) channels, each with a remote pulser/receiver matched to the ultrasonic transducer. Scanned helically, the billet is divided into concentric zones with a focused transducer used to acquire peak detected C-Scan image data for each zone. The depth of each zone is established by the depth of focus of that transducer. C-Scan image data from all channels are displayed simultaneously on a 1024×1280 CRT and scroll as the inspection advances along the billet length. The data are written to optical storage upon completion of the inspection. The analog electronics are fully synchronous and could provide a baseline system for the acquisition of full waveforms. Custom post scan analysis software has been developed to detect flaws using signal to noise based algorithms. This software provides more reproducible results than conventional systems and greatly reduces operator fatigue and the chance for error. This paper will discuss the system architecture and operation. A companion paper in this volume discusses inspection results. [2]