DolbyÆ Laboratories Announces AAC Support Program

New Technical Marketing Program To Facilitate The Adoption Of AAC Audio Compression For Internet Music Delivery, Digital Radio, And Japanese Digital Television

28-Mar-00

DolbyÆ Laboratories, the world leader in multichannel sound, announced the launch of a technical marketing program in support of the new audio compression standard known as AAC, or ""Advanced Audio Coding.""AAC is the latest audio coder standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as part of the MPEG specification. Compared to MPEG Layer-3, popularly known as MP3, AAC provides higher quality music reproduction at lower bit rates, and in addition can accommodate up to 48 audio channels. Widely viewed as the successor to MP3, AAC technology is being adopted in applications ranging from electronic music distribution, digital radio in the US and Japan, and digital television in Japan.AAC is a product of the combined efforts of several organizations including AT&T, Dolby Laboratories, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, and Sony Corporation. AAC is being made available to third parties on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms. In order to streamline the licensing process, the foregoing companies have appointed Dolby Laboratories to administer an AAC licensing program. Today's announcement of a technical and business development program to support AAC is a further signal of Dolby's commitment to this important new technology.""We believe that AAC will make better progress with a significant technical marketing effort,"" said Ramzi Haidamus, Dolby Laboratories' Technical/Business Strategist. ""With over 400 customers worldwide, spanning a broad range of audio markets, Dolby is in a unique position to reach both hardware manufacturers and content developers to present the advantages of AAC over competing formats.""To supplement its current licensing and patent administration staff, Dolby has hired two new employees who are dedicated to the AAC technical marketing program. John Arthur, AAC Licensing Engineer, joined Dolby from QSound Corporation where he was an acoustic research physicist involved in the design of several 3D audio algorithms. Mr. Arthur has a Masters Degree in physics from San Francisco State University. Andrew Fischer, AAC Business Development Manager, has a Bachelor of Music Degree and over 15 years' product management and marketing experience at Hercules Computer Technology and Jon Peddie Associates. The new AAC technical marketing group is responsible for support of AAC licensees, as well as the promotion of the technology.Dolby is preparing an AAC Decoder Software Developers Kit to assist licensees with AAC decoder implementations. This package will include:- Optimized C++ AAC decoder source code - Optimized consumer AAC encoder executable - Professional AAC encoder executable - Test materials and tools Dolby's AAC promotional efforts will include evangelism, public relations and trade show activities, participation in standardization efforts (SDMI), comparative testing with other codec technologies, and product training. In addition, Dolby is developing a Web site dedicated to AAC technology, its applications, and implementers, at www.aac-audio.com.According to Charles Seagrave, Dolby's Director of Engineering, Licensing, ""The grassroots phenomenon of MP3 has awakened the record industry to the realities of a digital market. AAC has matured just as other technologies are arriving, which will allow Internet music delivery business models to evolve. Dolby is committed to providing a high level of support to encourage the widespread adoption of AAC for online music distribution.""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. In independent tests, the coding efficiency of AAC proved 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 96kHz, and can achieve ITU-R broadcast quality at 320 kilobits per second for a 5.1-channel audio program. Developed and standardized as an ISO/IEC specification by four industry leaders (AT&T, Dolby Laboratories, Fraunhofer IIS, and Sony Corporation), AAC is supported by a growing number of hardware and software manufacturers.

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