Dolby Begins Licensing AAC Consumer Encoder Implementation; New Licensing Package Provides Reference Code for AAC Encoding in Consumer-Targeted Applications
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 16, 2001--Dolby Laboratories announces the availability of a new product offering for Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) licensees. Dolby's AAC Consumer Encoder Implementation is designed to help companies incorporate AAC encoding into their CD-ripping applications or other consumer-targeted high-quality audio encoding applications.
AAC, licensed by Dolby Laboratories, is the state of the art in audio compression technology, allowing users to create compressed audio that sounds just as brilliant as the original, while using a fraction of the bandwidth or storage required by the uncompressed audio source. AAC is an international standard, presented in the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 specifications. AAC offers audio quality superior to MP3, yet requires approximately 30 percent less data. Due to its remarkable ability to eliminate over 90 percent of the original audio signal without noticeable differences or distracting artifacts, AAC is widely regarded as the successor technology to MP3.
AAC had been adopted for music downloading and streaming over the Internet, for digital radio and television broadcasting, and for audio archiving applications. Major record companies such as Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG), Universal Music Group (UMG), and Warner Music Group are using AAC for Internet distribution; plus, Liquid Audio has selected AAC as the basis of its high-quality music delivery system. AAC is available on PCs, portable audio players, broadcast receivers, and home entertainment system components.
Dolby's new AAC Consumer Encoder Implementation compliments its Professional Encoder Implementation, which has been available for the past several months. Both the AAC Professional Encoder and the new AAC Consumer Encoder implementation license deliverables consist of C/C++ source code (floating point) as well as documentation in the form of a functional description of encoder operations.
Dolby's AAC Professional Encoder achieves the ultimate in audio quality and supports a wide variety of input sample rates and output bit rates. This code base is suitable for creating AAC-enabled products intended for professional applications, such as audio-editing software, broadcast encoding hardware, or mass encoding solutions for content preparation applications.
The AAC Consumer Encoder is designed to achieve high-quality audio with maximum encode speed. The speed gains result from algorithmic optimizations as well as Intel-architecture specific processor optimizations. The consumer encoder can produce AAC bitstreams up to three times faster (depending on input material and target bit rates) than the professional encoder; and this code base is recommended for creating consumer products such as CD-rippers.
Ramzi Haidamus, Dolby Laboratories' Director of Business Development said, "Dolby is excited to announce the availability of a speed-optimized AAC encoder. We look forward to helping AAC licensees produce high-performance AAC products such as CD-rippers, music players, and PC-based jukeboxes. These next-generation products will include digital rights management technologies to enable new business models and increase distribution security. AAC perfectly compliments these important elements while at the same time improving audio quality over all existing audio compression formats."
Dolby's AAC encoder implementation licenses are available to AAC patent licensees. For more information about AAC, please visit the AAC website, www.aac-audio.com, or send email to aacla@dolby.com.
About AAC
AAC is high-quality audio coding technology and the solution of choice for many broadcast and electronic music-distribution applications. AAC is compatible with all digital rights management, encryption, and watermarking solutions available today. Independent tests proved the coding efficiency of AAC to be superior to MP3, providing higher-quality audio reproduction at lower bit rates. AAC provides up to 48 channels of audio, sample rates of up to 96 kHz, and can achieve ITU-R broadcast quality at 320 kbps for a 5.1-channel audio program. Developed and standardized as an ISO/IEC, AAC is supported by a growing number of hardware and software manufacturers.
About Dolby Laboratories
Dolby Laboratories is the developer of signal processing systems used worldwide in applications that include motion-picture sound, consumer entertainment products and media, broadcasting, and music recording. Based in San Francisco with European headquarters in England, the privately held company also has offices in New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Beijing, and Tokyo. More information is available at www.dolby.com.
CONTACT:
Dolby Laboratories
Jim Arnold, 415/645-5116
jja@dolby.com
