Streaming tool developer Modulation Index has announced that it is adding the Fraunhofer-developed xHE-AAC codec to its arsenal of tools to be available in its products.
Part of the industry standard AAC family, xHE-AAC is designed for efficient use of bandwidth and a low footprint and overhead, while providing acceptable performance. It is also used as part of the Digital Radio Mondiale broadcast standard.
A release explained: “The coding efficiency of the xHE-AAC enables streaming services to operate at lower data rates, resulting in major benefits for consumers and content providers. The listening experience especially for users of mobile devices gets improved by reducing buffering times and increasing stream reliability, while the lower bandwidth requirements reduce CDN costs for content providers and also helps prevent data overflows for the consumer.”
Modulations Index President and founder Greg Ogonowski said: “We’ve taken an approach with our new line of encoders to not only lower the cost to the content provider with Fraunhofer’s new xHE-AAC codec software but also our exclusive FlashFree HLSdirect and DASHdirect platforms that eliminate the need for expensive media servers further opening the cloud or any server-based network streaming audio.”
He added, “In addition with xHE-AAC we are dramatically increasing the market for streaming audio to the still emerging 2G market.”