This article discusses the plan for the new MPEG-H Audio standard, a real-time 3-D audio encoder system with applications for broadcast and streaming distribution, developed in large part by the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, and recently finalized and submitted as an ISO/MPEG standard. It features a contribution by Robert Bleidt, titled “Delivering Multi-Platform Immersive Audio with the New MPEG-H Audio Standard.”MPEG-H is a group of standards under development by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) for a digital container standard, a video compression standard, an audio compression standard, and two conformance-testing standards.
The group of standards is formally known as ISO/IEC 23008—high-efficiency coding and media delivery in heterogeneous environments. MPEG-H Audio is just the third part of 13 document chapters and basically covers the codec for 3-D audio, which supports: an object-audio codec for “interactive sound mixing;” a realistic audio experience with additional front- and rear-height speaker channels to traditional surround sound setups; and higher order ambisonics (HOA), a technique for reproducing
a complete spherical soundfield to provide a fully immersive live sound experience.
The basic MPEG-H audio technology, which is under discussion for publication as an ISO/IEC international standard, results basically from cooperation between the Fraunhofer Institute for
Integrated Circuits IIS, Technicolor, and Qualcomm.
The full article, published in audioXpress August 2015, is now available online here.
