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Monday May 3, 11:38 am Eastern Time
Company Press Release
Phil Ramone Named as Senior Advisor to Lucent Technologies Internet
Music Download Initiative
MIDDLETOWN, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 3, 1999--Lucent Technologies
today announced that renowned music producer and technology guru Phil
Ramone has been named senior advisor to the Internet music download
initiative of the company's New Ventures Group. Ramone, an independent
consultant, will work with Lucent to promote its Enhanced Perceptual
Audio Coder (EPAC(TM)), a new version of the highest-quality audio
coder, to the music industry. In the past year, he conducted a
high-profile New York-to-Los Angeles Internet music demonstration of
EPAC to key industry figures in October, 1998.
Phil Ramone, producer of such noted artists as Billy Joel, Barbra
Streisand, and Paul Simon, and Chairman of the National Academy of
Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), has been an early adopter of
recording technology throughout his career and a pioneer in the growing
Internet music industry.
''Lucent brings a wealth of technical credibility to the downloadable
music industry, and I firmly hold that their solutions are second to
none,'' said Ramone. ''Producers in the music industry, as well as the
average music lover, deserve the best listening experience possible when
hearing music over the Internet. Lucent helps bridge the gap between
where we are today and where we need to be in order to sustain a viable,
Internet music business.''
Lucent's New Ventures Group has been developing opportunities for audio
technologies developed at Bell Labs, and has been working closely with
the music industry to develop secure, high-quality solutions for
Internet music delivery. Recently, Lucent announced a hand-held EPAC
player with e.Digital that will be delivered in December, 1999. Lucent
is a founding member of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), the
worldwide recording industry's effort to develop an open, secure access
system for digital music.
EPAC is a new version of the Perceptual Audio Coder(TM) - developed by
Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies -
which is an audio compression algorithm with the highest-quality audio
at the lowest bit rates. At 128 kilobits per second, EPAC offers
CD-transparent stereo sound.
''Phil Ramone is a very well-respected and experienced pillar of the
music industry, which is why we are so privileged to have him join us in
this advisory capacity,'' said Rachel Walkden, director of audio for the
Lucent New Ventures Group. ''We believe that we offer the
highest-quality audio coder with the greatest levels of security, and
Phil will be instrumental in helping us demonstrate these capabilities
to the music industry.''
EPAC is fully compliant with the RealNetworks G2 Player, the industry's
most recognized system for streaming media.
EPAC 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 11 to 1, thus reducing the
transmission time/bandwidth and storage by the same ratio, while still
retaining its fidelity.
Several recent improvements in EPAC have pushed its performance levels
to new heights, including: EPAC's improved quantization and coding,
allowing higher quality audio at lower bit rates, and EPAC's improved
psychoacoustic modeling from Bell Labs research, which provides
CD-transparent sound at 128 kbps.
EPAC's variable bit rates and superior audio quality allow the coder to
be used in multiple bandwidth applications.
PAC was recently rated the best performing audio coding technology in a
class of five tested in independent trials by Moulton Laboratories. In
this test, PAC at 96 kbps outperformed the MPEG-2 Advanced Audio Coder
(AAC). At 96 kbps, PAC also outperformed AAC at 128 kbps based on a
repeatable statistical score.
PAC is a technology which is supported across broad applications by
Lucent. For example, Lucent Digital Radio (www.lucent.com/ldr), a
wholly-owned venture of Lucent Technologies, will use PAC in its In-Band
On-Channel (IBOC) digital audio broadcast (DAB) system.
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.
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. For more information on Lucent
Technologies, visit the company's web site at www.lucent.com.
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Contact:
Chris Pfaff
908/582-7571 (office)
800/705-2368 (pager)
cpfaff@lucent.com
or
David Bikle
908/582-4120 (office)
dbikle@lucent.com |
