New Technology Expands Surround Audio Capabilities

Philips, Linear Acoustic and Coding Technologies have announced a new technology that will allow broadcasters to transport high-quality stereo and multichannel audio via a single AES/EBU circuit. It will be part of the MPEG Surround ISO standard.

The system uses the Philips Applied Technologies' "buried data technique" to embed the MPEG surround parameters in a backwards-compatible PCM stereo audio signal. The resultant multichannel audio can then be decoded by an MPEG Surround decoder.

"The transition from stereo to multichannel was never easier than today", said Tim Carroll, Linear Acoustic president and founder. "Once I became aware of this great solution, I immediately knew this is what the professional market needed. We are proud to be the first company worldwide to offer MPEG Surround encoding with PCM buried data embedding."

The new technology was recently demonstrated at the Audio Engineering Society Show in Vienna, Austria.