EDIG: Lucent Press Release
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. |
