IBiquity Digital is winning rave reviews from those who have hear...
IBiquity Digital is winning rave reviews from those who have heard demonstrations of the proprietary new codec, which was installed to fix the AM audio quality artifacts that prompted the DAB subgroup of the National Radio Systems Committee (NRSC)…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
to suspend its in-band, on-channel (IBOC) standardization effort in June. “The problem is fixed,” declared the subgroup’s chmn., Milford Smith, of Greater Media. He said he and others heard demonstrations of the new codec last week and were permitted by iBiquity to hear as many samples at whatever bit rates they wanted. The improvement in the AM IBOC signal was “spectacular,” Smith said, describing the quality was equal to or better than existing analog FM. For FM IBOC, the sound quality improvement meant the signal was “virtually indistinguishable” from that of the source CD, Smith said. He said he wasn’t sure what the developments would mean for resuming the standardization effort on AM IBOC, saying the subgroup hadn’t been asked by anyone to do that. Larger scale listening demonstrations are planned for this week at NPR studios in Washington, after which the subgroup may resume its activities, Smith said. IBiquity executives declined to discuss specifics of the new codec, saying a formal announcement was planned for early this week that would summarize the improvements. Sources familiar with the developments said the new codec was neither AAC nor PAC, but described it as a hybrid of the 2. We're told the new codec will be used for both AM and FM IBOC because there isn’t sufficient memory on chipsets to accommodate different coding systems.