apt-X Lossless sets new industry benchmarks
Posted: Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at 11:40 am
apt-X Lossless sets new industry benchmarks
04/09/2009
Audio compression developer reveals performance of apt-X Lossless, the adaptive, lossless audio codec architecture for high-efficiency transmission of multi-channel audio over wireless channels.
APTX, a leading developer of high-performance audio compression technology, today announces that apt-X Lossless, the company’s new, adaptive, lossless audio coding scheme, significantly out-performs other lossless audio coding schemes, including FLAC, in a number of emerging application scenarios that depend upon the efficient transmission of high-quality audio over wireless channels and networks. This conclusion is based on performance data obtained from rigorous and intensive laboratory testing of apt-X Lossless against other types of lossless audio codecs using a set of industry-standard reference audio samples. The improvements in performance demonstrated by apt-X Lossless relative to FLAC, for example, include a significant gain in compression ratio – up to 10 per cent more data reduction – at time delays under 2 milliseconds. This extremely low degree of latency (sub 2 ms) is of critical importance in applications involving video, interactive games, and 2-way communications.
apt-X Lossless empowers next-generation consumer audio devices
The new industry benchmarks set by apt-X Lossless are of particular interest to manufacturers of wireless audio devices, especially for consumer markets, because they have a positive impact on audio quality, bandwidth efficiency, power consumption, and processor load. Such factors are critical in the design viability of next-generation consumer devices, such as 4G/LTE smart-phones and wearable, portable media players, and go-anywhere, touch-screen tablet computers.
The results of the performance testing of apt-X Lossless, together with a technical description of the architecture itself, are to be formally presented to members of the Audio Engineering Society in a paper session at the 127 AES Convention in New York City, October 9-12, 2009. Speaking in advance of AES New York 2009, Dr. David Trainor, the architect of apt-X Lossless and author of the technical paper said: “This research clearly shows that apt-X Lossless – the latest addition to the apt-X portfolio of scalable audio compression solutions – has the potential to elevate the quality of multi-channel audio transmitted over wireless networks, and mitigate many of the deployment issues traditionally associated with lossless audio coding in these environments. The superior performance of apt-X Lossless under real-world system conditions that vary widely over time – available processor cycles, remaining battery energy, channel bandwidth, radio propagation conditions, and other factors – has direct implications for the user experience. This is especially important in consumer electronics where users have certain expectations relating to the minimum guaranteed Quality of Service.”
Founded twenty years ago in 1989, APTX, a Belfast based high-technology company, is renowned in broadcast engineering and professional audio post-production for its commercially successful series of low-latency apt-X audio codecs – standard apt-X, Enhanced apt-X, and recently, apt-X Live for 8:1 compression of full-bandwidth audio. Available since July 2009, the new apt-X Lossless audio codec is implemented as C and C++ code, and has been verified on x86 processors, ARM 9E and ARM Cortex M3, Texas Instruments C64xx, and others to be announced. From a system integration stand-point, apt-X Lossless is easy to port across multiple hardware and software platforms.
Highlights of apt-X Lossless
• Highly scalable and dynamically adaptive coding mechanism
• High-performance lossless compression – up to 96 kHz sampling rates
• Mastering-grade audio – sample resolutions up to 24 bits
• Extremely low coding delay
• Low computational complexity, run-time overhead and device power consumption
• Hybrid lossy coding for communications links with stringent bandwidth constraints
• Easily portable across multiple hardware and software platforms
