Re: BBC R&D's views on AAC in 1999

davidrobinson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On 28 Apr, 13:38, Richard Evans <R.P.Evans.NoS...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
DAB is the Betamax of digital radio wrote:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/brochures/opendays1999/audiocoding.pdf
Interesting how they say that aac provides quite good quality at 256k,
and of course now the BBC uses mp2 at 1/2 that rate. It's hard to see
any logic in thinking that 128k mp2 will be acceptable, when back in
1999 they considered 256k aac as only "quite good".

I think you've misread it.

256kbps AAC was quite good for 5.1 surround sound!

Oops, yes now you've pointed it out I can see how I misread it.


128kbps AAC is excellent for stereo.

I'm fairly sure this is the report they're referring to...

http://www.mp3-tech.org/programmer/docs/w2006.zip

....which is basically BBC R&D saying "please switch to AAC now, mp2
isn't good enough while AAC is excellent".

Presumably it was the technical people in the BBC pushing for this, who were presumably over ruled my management. Well perhaps when most of Europe are using DAB+ with aac+ it will put some more weight behind the push for the BBC to adopt aac. Although it would require a very large percentage of receivers in use to be DAB+ compatible.


That's even before they thought about reducing mp2 bitrates to
128kbps!

Humm.... It took me a minute or so to figure out exactly what your point is here.

Are you saying that they thought 192k mp2 was not really good enough, and yet still ended up using 128k.

Richard E.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: AAC vs MP2 error performance
    ... Croiset has tried to suggest that AAC required a BER of 10^-9 ... dying) DAB system uses UEP that the DAB ... supporters claim that the MP2 codec is more robust than AAC and all ...
    (alt.radio.digital)
  • Re: AAC vs MP2 error performance
    ... Croiset has tried to suggest that AAC required a BER of 10^-9 whereas MP2 ... "The improvement of the correction of error is obligatory because the MP2 ... ONLY because of the fact that the old DAB system uses UEP ... This is because mpeg decoders in DVB-devices for fixed reception do work ...
    (alt.radio.digital)
  • Re: AAC+ for DAB.
    ... DAB with mp2 cannot allow all existing FM ... radio-station using AAC+ as you can with MP2"). ... to commercial radio to start with, ...
    (alt.radio.digital)
  • Re: mp2 + sbr
    ... >> been chosen to show off the HE AAC v2 codec in its best possible ... > We never say that mp2 is better than AAC+! ... I'm sorry, but I have listened to 128kbps MP2 on DAB for hundreds, ... > Experience of DAB and mp2 is more than 10 years in production. ...
    (alt.radio.digital)
  • Re: The Voice of Murdoch pronounces FM radio dead
    ... The first DAB receiver didn't go on sale ... include AAC when development of AAC began in 1994, ... Here's a doc of a listening test where someone from BBC R&D took part ... So I'm absolutely certain that the BBC execs were provided with the ...
    (uk.tech.digital-tv)