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To: rkc who wrote (8163)	4/21/1999 10:22:00 AM
From: BarbaraT	Respond to of 13776

EDIG .. great news for a .60 stock! Lucent Technologies, Texas Instruments and e.Digital Announce Secure Internet Music Download Device MIDDLETOWN, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 21, 1999--Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU) announced today that it is working with e.Digital (OTC: EDIG) on the development of a new handheld device for listening to downloaded music from the Internet. The new device, to be manufactured by e.Digital, will use the Lucent Enhanced Perceptual Audio Coder (EPAC(TM)) and will employ e.Digital's patented MicroOS(TM) file management system. The e.Digital device will use a new class of Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) manufactured by Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN). The EPAC decoder is commercially available as a port to the Texas Instruments DSP and will be supported by other DSPs in the future. Unlike other handheld devices on the market that play downloadable music using the MP3 format, the e.Digital device will play EPAC files. "We are taking the current generation of hand-held players to the highest levels of audio quality and design," said Joyce Eastman, director of audio for Lucent's New Ventures Group. "We have produced what we believe will be a solid design for an EPAC player that offers high levels of security with excellent sound quality." 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. "The quality of the sound that we've heard with EPAC on our hardware platform is exceptional," said Fred Falk, CEO of e.Digital. "We know what people want in an Internet music download player; great sound in a compact device that's robust and well-priced." "Our new DSP is a new class of processor for a new market," said Gary Johnson, worldwide manager of DSPs for Texas Instruments. "We look forward to further work with Lucent and e.Digital on making our player a success in the market." 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. 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. e.Digital Corporation offers an engineering partnership for th world's leading electronics companies to link portable digital devices to PCs and the Internet. Engineering services range from the licensing of e.Digital's patented MicroOS file management system to custom product development and manufacturing services. For more information on the company, visit www.edig.com. 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. CONTACT: Lucent Technologies Chris Pfaff 908-582-7571 (office) 973-509-6565 (home) or Lucent Technologies