Fraunhofer Software Helps Power Immersive Music Services for Amazon Echo Studio Smart Speaker

Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, the inventor of mp3 and primary developer of AAC, MPEG-H Audio and other MPEG standard audio codecs, revealed that Amazon has become an important music-centric licensee of its MPEG-H audio decoder software, included in the new Echo Studio. MPEG-H is the audio scheme used for new immersive music services including those based on the Sony 360 Reality Audio format.

On Tuesday, October 15, in New York, Sony, together with four music streaming services and an important number of music industry partners promoted a press event to announce the new 360 Reality Audio music ecosystem. This follows the presentations made early at CES 2019 and a repeat of the demonstrations at IFA 2019 in Berlin. At this event, Sony announced the upcoming commercial availability of 360 Reality Audio, an immersive audio experience utilizing object-based spatial audio technology.