• ETRI Journal
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.635-638
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• 2005

Spatial audio coding (SAC) is an extremely high compact representation of encoded multi-channel audio material. This paper suggests a multi-channel audio service in the terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting (T-DMB) system using a novel SAC tool, which is called a virtual source location information (VSLI)-based SAC tool. Intensive experiments are presented to evaluate the validity of the proposed VSLI-based SAC tool, and prototypical systems are also presented to demonstrate the reliability of the proposed multi-channel T-DMB system in real applications.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.599-609
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• 2009

An overview of the recently finalized multi-channel audio coding standard MPEG Surround is provided. This audio coding standard downmixes multi-channel signals to mono or stereo signals and, simultaneously, extracts spatial parameters for its encoding process. In its decoding process, it reconstructs multi-channel signals based on the downmix signals and spatial parameters. Since the downmix signals are coded in conventional audio coding format such as AAC and MP3 and the spatial parameters require a small amount of information MPEG Surround guarantees high sound quality multi-channel audio at low bit rates. Besides, it is backward-compatible to conventional audio coding techniques because the downmix signals can be played on portable audio devices ignoring the spatial parameter information. In this paper, Part 1 presents an overview of the basic structure of MPEG Surround and Part 2 describes various modes and tools including the binaural mode which supports the virtual 5.1-channel playback via headphones or earphones. The listening test results by various companies and organizations are also presented.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.219-222
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• 2006

Virtual source location information (VSLI) has been newly utilized as a spatial cue for compact representation of multichannel audio. This information is represented as the azimuth of the virtual source vector. The superiority of VSLI is confirmed by comparison of the spectral distances, average bit rates, and subjective assessment with a conventional cue.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.222-229
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• 2007

According to the advancement of multimedia compression technologies, high quality multi-media services are easily found in common life. Along with this situation, 5.1-channel audio service also has expanded the application area to home theater system and car theater system and consumer can easily take a chance to experience the feeling of 5.1-channel audio. On the other hand, terrestrial DMB service has been launched in Korea from Dec. 2005 as a handhold multi-media broadcasting service. However, multi-channel audio was not considered due to the insufficiency of bandwidth and the handhold usage. Lately, MPEG is standardizing high efficiency multi-channel audio compression technology for handheld broadcasting service, and several trial for application is introduced in Europe. In this paper, we would like to explain multi-channel audio compression technology, describe the implementation of the verification system for the multi-channel audio service over T-DMB and investigate the possibility of further realization of the service.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.330-333
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• 2005

The Inter-Channel Level Difference (ICLD) is a cue parameter to estimate spectral information in a binaural cue coding that has been recently in the spotlight as a multichannel audio signal compression technique. Even though the ICLD is an essential parameter, it is generally distorted by quantization. In this paper, a new modified ICLE representation method to minimize the quantization distortion is proposed by adopting a flexible determination of the reference channel and the unidirectional quantization. Our experimental result confirms that the proposed method improves the multichannel audio output quality even with the reduced bit-rate.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 1999.11a
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• pp.199-203
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• 1999

This paper is on the DSP system design and implementation for real time MPEG-2 AAC multichannel audio, and MPEG-4 object oriented audio coding. This DSP system employs two DSPs of the state of the art TMS320C6701, developed by TI semiconductor. DSP board has PCI interface for downloading application program and control the system. DSP board was designed to use for both encoder and decoder, by setting several switches. The system contains external input and output box also, for A/D and D/A conversion for eight channel audio. The input box converts multi channel digital audio to ADI format, that provides serial interface for eight channel digital audio. And the output box converts ADI format signal to multi channel audio. Through this ADI interface, DSP boards can be connected to input, output box. Implemented DSP system was tested for integration with MPEG-2 AAC encoder and decoder S/W. Currently the DSP system performs realtime AAC 4-channel audio encoding with two DSPs, and 8-channel decoding with one DSP.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.241-242
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• 2006

MPEG Surround is an audio coding technology that represents multi-channel audio signal with downmixed audio signal(s) and very low bitrate side information based on Binaural Cue Coding. The side information consists of Inter-Channel Level Difference, Inter-Channel Correlation, and payloads. These two parameters are correspondent to the well-known spatial parameters in psycho-acoustics, Inter-aural Level Difference (ILD) and Inter-Aural Cross Correlation (IACC). Though ICLD is to provide perceptually equivalent ILD to the listener, however, the ILD of the original multi-channel audio signal and that of the MPEG Surround encoded signal was different. The difference between two ILD values is defined as ILD Distortion (ILDD). This paper provides how ILDD can be applied to enhance sound quality in MPEG Surround and how much ILDD is decreased.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.55-60
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• 1996

This paper describes the subjective assessment of the multi-channel audio quality according to the bitrate changing and evaluates the predistortion effect to avoid the unmasked noise after matrixing/dematrxing process in transmission and regeneration of the multi-channel audio. The simulation is processed by the perceptual coding that is MPEG-2 Audio layer II algorithm. We evaluate the quality improvement about predistortion using or not by 384, 320, 256, 128kbps. As the result of the double blind subjective assessment, 5 Grade-Impairment Scale is scored under minus one to 320kbps and so audio quality is evaluated to be perceptible, but not annoying in 3/2 channel. The effect of the predistortion is improved one level in 128kbps and especially speech test material I better improved than music test materials.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.2E
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• pp.91-97
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• 1995

This paper describes the implementation of a multi-channel audio codec for HETV. This codec has the features of the 3/2-stereo plus low frequency enhancement, downward compatibility with the smaller number of channels, backward compatibility with the existing 2/0-stereo system(MPEG-1 audio), and multilingual capability. The encoder of this codec consists of 6-channel analog audio input part with the sampling rate of 48 kHz, 4-channel digital audio input part and three TMS320C40 /DSPs. The encoder implements multi-channel audio compression using a human perceptual psychoacoustic model, and has the bit rate reduction to 384 kbit/s without impairment of subjective quality. The decoder consists of 6-channel analog audio output part, 4-channel digital audio output part, and two TMS320C40 DSPs for a decoding procedure. The decoder analyzes the bit stream received with bit rate of 384 kbit/s from the encoder and reproduces the multi-channel audio signals for analog and digital outputs. The multi-processing of this audio codec using multiple DSPs is ensured by high speed transfer of date between DSPs through coordinating communication port activities with DMA coprocessors. Finally, some technical considerations are suggested to realize the problem of real-time operation, which are found out through the implementation of this codec using the MPEG-2 layer II sudio coding algorithm and the use of the hardware architecture with commercial multiple DSPs.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.28 no.1E
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• pp.29-34
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• 2009

MPEG4 High Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding (HE-AAC) and MPEG Surround are one of the most efficient combinations for low bit rate multi-channel audio coding. Based on the fact that these two codecs have identical quadrature mirror filter (QMF) analysis and synthesis structures, we propose a dual-domain connection scheme for the codecs. Specifically two time-domain connection methods are analyzed and compared to the QMF subband-domain connection method. Experimental results show that both the time-domain connection methods cause no subjective sound quality degradation compared to the QMF subband-domain connection method, which verifies that one can select either of them depending on application scenarios.