Lucent Technologies Licenses Its Perceptual Audio Coder to Mode for Internet Music Distribution

Business Wire, Jan 11, 1999

MURRAY HILL, N.J./UTRECHT, The Netherlands--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 11, 1999--Lucent Technologies today announced that it has licensed its industry-leading audio codec, the Perceptual Audio Coder(TM) (PAC(TM)), or EPAC(TM), to MODE -- Music on Demand International BV -- for use in MODE's Internet music distribution system and service. PAC will be integrated into the music delivery system that MODE will offer to artists, record labels, and broadcasters for high-quality, secure transmission over the Internet. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Lucent and MODE will demonstrate their solutions for the music industry at the upcoming Midem international music market in Cannes, France from January 24-28, in Booth No. B1.02 at the Espace Ortega in the Palais des Festivals.

EPAC is a new version of the Perceptual Audio Coder - 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.

MODE's state-of-the-art solution promises to be the first pan-European Internet music distribution system of its kind, offering a flexible, secure platform for music delivery and online transactions. MODE offers a unique database management system that automatically accounts for artists rights in particular countries, depending on where users download song files.

"The international music industry is now aware of the power of the ultimate global digital music delivery network - the Internet - and Lucent is delighted to be working with MODE as it brings its system online," said Rachel Walkden, director with Lucent's New Ventures Group. "Lucent's EPAC offers compression without compromise. We believe this is the kind of quality that recording artists and record labels will demand on the Internet."

Lucent's New Ventures Group has been working with the music industry to develop secure, high-quality solutions for Internet music delivery. Lucent is a supporter of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), the worldwide recording industry's effort to develop an open, secure access system for digital music.

"The music industry requires the kind of Internet system that MODE offers: secure, high-quality delivery of content which protects both the artists' rights as well as the rights of the buyer," said John Preston, MODE director, and former director of BMG in the U.K. "Lucent's EPAC is the premium technology for encoding music for Internet transmission."

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.

MODE - Music on Demand International BV - is based in Utrecht, The Netherlands, and operates an office in the U.K. The company plans to offer the first pan-European Internet music distribution system for the music industry. For more information on MODE, visit the company's Web site at www.mode.net.