Fraunhofer is giving a preview of what it will exhibit at the upcoming CES convention in Las Vegas.
The German research organization will promote MPEG Surround, calling this a new standard for delivering iPod compatible, high-quality surround sound at stereo bitrates.
Show attendees will hear MPEG Surround from a legacy iPod through a Fraunhofer-designed iPod docking station prototype. The company will also demo MPEG Surround is in an automobile environment.
Fraunhofer says MPEG Surround will enhance audio fidelity in home, car and computer environments. “A built-in, virtual surround headphone mode lets consumers enjoy surround sound even on portable devices such as iPods, mobile-TV receivers and 3G phones. Music labels including Sony Music, Eagle Rock Entertainment and Telarc International have endorsed this enhanced music standard.”
It will offer MPEG Surround software implementations via patent licenses to industry players like content providers, broadcasters and related equipment OEMs.
Also at CES, the research firm will show iPhone audio codec implementations available for licensing as object code libraries. “Technologies include the MPEG-4 HE-AAC and HE-AAC v2 standards, which are the codecs of choice for any mobile multimedia application including Internet radio streaming over 3G or WiFi connections,” it stated.
“Also available is the MPEG Surround virtual surround headphone mode. The Fraunhofer MPEG audio software portfolio for the iPhone and iPod Touch is completed by offerings including a MPEG AAC-LC encoder and the HD-AAC and AAC-ELD codecs. The software libraries are specifically optimized for low resource consumption.”