Gracenote Incorporates MPEG-4 AacPlus V2 Format Into Mobile Media Management Applications

NEW YORK (Gracenote) Gracenote, the global leader in digital entertainment technology, today announced that it is supporting encoding and playback of the aacPlus v2 format, also known as High-Efficiency AAC v2, in the Gracenote Media Manager. By offering this standard codec in its mobile music services, Gracenote is making it easier for handset manufacturers and carriers to integrate PC-based music management software into mobile applications. This follows 3GPP's recent announcement of the MPEG-4 High-Efficiency AAC as the codec of choice for delivery of audio content to future 3G devices. "Gracenote's solutions are leading the market in media identification and management on the PC. By integrating support for key technologies like aacPlus v2 these technologies can now be applied to the universe of mobile content," stated Guillaume Decugis, COO of Musiwave. "This will allow mobile music service providers like Musiwave to provide a complete solution to carriers and consumers."

"Gracenote is a powerhouse in the music industry", said Victor Kanevsky, Senior Director of Strategic Alliances for Coding Technologies. "We are delighted that Gracenote is now using aacPlus, which has become the common denominator codec, to strengthen their position in the mobile space." Gracenote's technologies are designed to enable wireless operators, service providers and handset manufacturers to take advantage of higher bandwidth networks, new music phones offering increased storage capacity and better sound, and growing consumer interest in purchasing commerce and content via mobile phone.

Gracenote offers the industry's fastest mobile music recognition service, enables linking to third-party content and commerce, such as ringtones, ringbacks, full-song downloads and more, and also offers a white-label media manager. The Gracenote Media Manager provides a complete environment to manage and play digital music on the PC and transfer it to a music-enabled handset with clean and standardized music metadata.

MPEG-4 aacPlus is AAC coupled with Coding Technologies' SBR (Spectral Band Replication) and Parametric Stereo technologies. SBR is a unique bandwidth extension technique, which enables audio codecs to deliver the same quality at half the bit rate. Parametric Stereo enhances the codec efficiency a second time for low-bit-rate stereo signals. Both SBR and Parametric Stereo are backward and forward compatible methods to enhance the efficiency of any audio codec. As a result, aacPlus delivers streaming and downloadable 5.1 multichannel audio at 128 Kbps, near CD-quality stereo at 32 Kbps, excellent quality stereo at 24 Kbps, and great quality for mixed content down to 16 Kbps and below. This level of efficiency fundamentally enables new applications in the markets of mobile and digital broadcast.