Today's Webnoize Article features Lucent & Edig
news.webnoize.com
2.19.1999
February 19, 1999
technology . products . consumer-electronics . partnerships
Lucent, e.Digital Developing Solid-State
Music Player
Lucent Technologies has commissioned e.Digital
Corporation to build a second-generation prototype of a
solid-state, CD-quality music player. The player will
use Lucent's Perceptual Audio Coder (PAC)
technology, as well as e.Digital's MicroOS Audio file
management system, to enable users to listen to
high-quality streaming music over the Internet.
Developed by Bell Labs, Lucent's research and
development arm, PAC is an audio
compression/decompression (codec) algorithm that
provides high-quality audio at low bit rates. By
compressing music at a rate of 11 to 1, according to
Lucent, PAC is able to reduce transmission
time/bandwidth and storage by the same ratio, while
retaining audio fidelity.
The e.Digital prototype will be shipped to Lucent by the
end of this month, according to e.Digital President and
Chief Executive Officer Fred Falk, so that Lucent can
demonstrate its PAC technology to the music industry.
Lucent is working with the Recording Industry
Association of America's (RIAA) Secure Digital Music
Initiative, alongside other heavy hitters like America
Online, AT&T, IBM, Matsushita, Microsoft,
RealNetworks, Sony Corporation, Toshiba and the Big
Five record companies.
Already Lucent has demonstrated e.Digital's
first-generation prototype at the Midem International
Music Market trade show in Cannes, France. And
since the turn of the year, Lucent has made PAC
compatible with the RealNetworks RealSystem G2
system for streaming media, and licensed the
technology to Music on Demand International (MODE),
a Netherlands-based outfit that will implement PAC
into what the company is calling the first pan-European
Internet music distribution system [see 1.14.99
Lucent's PAC Impacting RealNetworks G2, Digital
Radio, Overseas Music Venture].
Once digital delivery standards have been set, Falk
said, e.Digital hopes to become the hardware provider
of choice for PAC licensees, much the way Diamond
Multimedia quickly became the de facto leader in
portable MP3 players with its Rio PMP300 unit.
With its MicroOS patented file management system,
e.Digital enables the storage and manipulation of
compressed music, voice, graphic, text or video files,
and support for an unlimited number of files, directories
or subdirectories, using a small amount of memory.
The company has developed a specially adapted
version of this system for use with larger music files,
called MicroOS Audio, which it has incorporated into a
portable CD-quality music player and recorder that
includes a PC interface.
Earlier this month, e.Digital was awarded its fourth and
fifth patents by the U.S. Patent Office for its core
technology, including one covering the use of MicroOS
in handheld record and playback devices, and one
covering the company's methods for editing files in a
handheld recorder. Upon being notified of the new
patents, Falk said the development would aid the
company in its existing business relationships with
Lanier Worldwide and Intel, and help e.Digital form new
alliances.
Falk believes that growing demand for portable, digital
devices that interface with PCs and the Internet means
e.Digital's patented hardware and software solutions
could provide essential compact file management for,
and PC linking to, handheld devices, including music
recorders.
e.Digital claims to have been the first company to use
flash memory in a handheld voice recording device, to
use removable digital recording media in a handheld
device, to interface a portable voice recorder with a PC
and to record and play back CD-quality music using
CompactFlash storage media.
Related
Companies
LUCENT
E.DIGITAL
Related News
Items
1.14.1999
Lucent's PAC Impacting
RealNetworks G2, Digital
Radio, Overseas Music
Venture
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