Oct. 23, 1998-- Lucent Technologies and
Cognicity, Inc. will demonstrate the latest digital audio and watermarking
technologies today to more than 160 leaders in the music industry at the
Beverly Hills Nikko Hotel. The demonstration will be presented by renowned
music producer and technology guru Phil Ramone. Ramone will be with a group of
music industry leaders in Manhattan who will be linked to the Los Angeles group
over the Internet through the Lucent Collaborative Video(tm) system.
The event features a demonstration of Lucent Technologies' audio compression
technology, called PAC(tm) (Perceptual Audio Coder), and Cognicity's
AudioKey(tm) watermarking technology.
Phil Ramone, producer of such noted artists as Barbra Streisand, and Paul
Simon, and president of N2K Encoded Music, has been an early adopter of
recording technology throughout his career and a pioneer in the growing
Internet music industry.
``Musicians and scientists share the same creative passions for their work;
this demonstration is an ideal crossroads for two industries that can change
the way people listen to music,'' said Ramone. ``These technologies are
enablers of new applications. What Lucent and Cognicity have is really
exciting, and it's what we've been waiting for in the next phase of the digital
revolution.''
Lucent Technologies' PAC is a patented Bell Labs algorithm for the compression
of audio. PAC delivers the highest-quality audio at the lowest possible bit
rates. It uses psychoacoustic modeling - that is, a representation of how
humans hear sound - to compress music in a way that is not noticeable to the
ear. Music is compressed at a rate of 15 to 1, thus reducing the transmission
time/bandwidth and storage by the same ratio, while still retaining its
fidelity.
Lucent continues to make significant improvements in PAC. Lucent Digital Radio,
a wholly-owned venture of Lucent Technologies, will use PAC for digital audio
broadcast (DAB), and Lucent is working on other products and services that
incorporate the technology.
``We are on the verge of some very exciting developments within this industry,
and Lucent has a great deal to offer as a technology enabler for new ways of
enjoying music,'' said Rachel Walkden, director of Lucent's new audio ventures
group.
Lucent Technologies' famed research and development arm, Bell Labs, has been at
the forefront of technology for the music industry for decades, with the
introduction of sound for motion pictures in 1926; the invention of stereo
recording in 1933; the invention of the transistor in 1947; the introduction of
computer-synthesized music in the 1950s; the introduction of psychoacoustics in
the 1960s; sub-band coding of audio in the 1970s; the introduction of linear
predictive coding in the 1980s, and the Perceptual Audio Coder in the 1990s.
ELEMENTS OF THE LOS ANGELES-NEW YORK EVENT
The Lucent Collaborative Video system delivers high-quality audio and video to
multiple locations over the Internet at rates ranging from ISDN (128,000 bits
per second) to T-1 (1.5 million bits per second) using proprietary Bell Labs
algorithms. The PC-based system can stream 32 simultaneous video files to the
user's desktop, allowing for unparalleled creative control. For more
information about the Lucent Collaborative Video system, visit the Web site at
www.multimedia.bell-labs.com/lcv.
The Beverly Hills-New York Internet connection uses routers from Lucent's
Remote Access Business Unit. For more information on Lucent's remote access
products, visit the data networking Web site at www.lucent.com/dns.
Cognicity's watermarking scheme provides active steps for artists and recording
labels to protect and promote their work.
``The protection of intellectual property is one of the major issues in
Internet music, and we want to demonstrate the effectiveness of our tools for
the music publishing industry,'' said Ahmed Tewfik, CEO of Cognicity. ``We
believe that in the next few years, downloading music from the Internet will
become as common an experience for music lovers as loading a CD player.''
Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., designs, builds and
delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems
and software, data networking systems, business telephone systems and
microelectronic components. Bell Labs is the research and development arm for
the company.
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