FROM LUCENT TODAY
June 30, 1999 08:46 AM
MIDDLETOWN, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 30, 1999--Lucent Technologies LU today announced that it will license its Enhanced Perceptual Audio Coder(TM) (ePAC(TM)) to Lydstrom, Inc. to use in a new personal media storage device which is capable of storing the equivalent of 5,000 compact discs. The device from Lydstrom, which will be available in December, 1999, is targeted at the growing market for networked home entertainment systems. The device will allow families to effectively manage and catalog various types of media, particularly current CD collections and audio downloaded from the Internet.
The Lydstrom system will use ePAC to compress Internet music at a rate of 11 to 1, delivering the highest quality Internet music in the industry. Users will be able to retrieve, store, catalog, and play multiple streams of audio to different parts of the home.
ePAC is based on the Lucent Perceptual Audio Coder(TM) (PAC(TM)), the highest-quality digital audio codec in the industry. ePAC is used in an Internet music initiative that the Lucent New Ventures Group has developed. Lucent recently announced that ePAC will be used in a reference design for a handheld device that e.Digital, based in San Diego, will develop for December, 1999 delivery to consumers.
"The home entertainment industry realizes the benefits of Internet-driven content and Lydstrom is capitalizing on the growing need for consumer-friendly devices that can address the need for Internet/PC/home stereo convergence," said Rachel Walkden, director of audio initiatives for Lucent's New Ventures Group. "The quality benefits of ePAC over competitive solutions become even more apparent when the music is played through a home stereo."
"Listening to Internet music is no longer confined to the PC-centric world. We've developed a next-generation audio player that delivers on-demand entertainment in an extremely intuitive manner," said Rahul Shah, president of Lydstrom. "The ePAC coder helps us to create a listening experience that has never occurred before. Now, the music lover is closer to having a virtual on-demand universal music library than ever before."
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. Lucent's New Ventures Group 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 Lucent Perceptual Audio Coder(TM) (PAC(TM)) developed by Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies. PAC 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.
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.
Lydstrom, Inc., with offices in Boston, MA and Arlington, VA, was formed to address the growing need for media management solutions in the home. For more information on Lydstrom, visit our website at lydstrom.com. For investment opportunities, please e-mail investors@lydstrom.com or call Sourav Goswami at 703/465-9558.
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. |
