MUMBAI: Dolby Laboratories, Inc. and digital music service provider Omnifone today announced an international collaboration to introduce the multi-platform digital file format Dolby(R) Pulse into cloud-based music services for mobile, PC, in-home, and in-car streaming and downloading. To achieve this, Omnifone will be Dolby’s first customer to utilize the pre-processing and encoding tool Dolby Media Generator to encode its entire global catalogue of over 6.5 million tracks into the Dolby Pulse format.
Dolby Pulse combines the efficiency of High Efficiency AAC (HE AAC) audio coding with Dolby’s proven quality and audio expertise, ensuring an optimal combination of quality, efficiency, and integrity of content. Part of the MPEG-4 standard, HE AAC offers rich, premium sound at low bit rates, making it ideal for bandwidth-constrained applications. The Dolby Pulse system adds true Dolby metadata capability to the efficiency of open standard HE AAC.
“As digital content services and networked devices become part of our day-to-day lives, the ability to deliver digital content in the most efficient file format becomes increasingly important,” said Kevin Yeaman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Dolby Laboratories. “Dolby’s collaboration with Omnifone to pioneer the first commercial use of both the Dolby Pulse format and Dolby Media Generator will bring a new level of speed, quality, and efficiency to Omnifone’s digital media services.
“With multiple services live in 20 countries today, Omnifone has outstanding reach as a digital music service provider and is an ideal partner for the introduction of the Dolby Pulse codec to consumers across multiple cloud-based services on a wide range of devices globally,” continued Yeaman.
“Omnifone is proud to be Dolby’s first customer to bring the high-performance, high-efficiency Dolby Pulse format to market,” said Rob Lewis, CEO of Omnifone. “Consumers demand great sound quality, fast downloads, and streaming, and want to be able to store more media on their connected devices. Omnifone’s decision to encode tracks using Dolby Media Generator into the Dolby Pulse format in 2010 will deliver highly efficient track sizes, faster delivery speeds, and higher sound quality per megabyte than traditional formats like MP3.”
Dolby Media Generator
Dolby Media Generator is a software solution for the generation and delivery of digital content to multiple devices and platforms across both fixed and mobile networks. It is able to encode audio content in the highly efficient Dolby Pulse format with excellent audio quality at a low bit rate of 48 kilo bits per second (kbps) and can deliver good quality audio at bit rates as low as 24 kbps, delivering one audio bitstream for net connected TVs, set-top boxes, mobiles, PCs, and in-car and internet based services, as well as multiple embedded services.
Label Support
Omnifone’s global catalogue of over 6.5 million licensed tracks from Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Music, and Warner Music International and leading independent labels will be encoded into Dolby Pulse using Dolby Media Generator. The major labels support the introduction of the Dolby Pulse format for mass market cloud-based digital media services:
“Content formats have an important part to play in the introduction of legitimate music access across mainstream connected consumer electronics,” said Rob Wells, Senior Vice President, Digital, Universal Music Group International. “Omnifone’s introduction of the Dolby Pulse format will enable a better user experience for music consumers on an ever expanding range of devices, with faster downloads, and better sound quality from smaller files requiring less memory. Suddenly, you can store four times more music on your device than before and still get great sound quality from the files.”
“Great sound quality is a critical component of providing a compelling premium digital music service for mass-market consumers, and Dolby is an established leader in developing high-fidelity audio entertainment solutions. We are pleased to be partnering with Omnifone and Dolby to offer fans a rich, multi-platform listening experience,” said Michael Paull, Executive Vice President, Global Digital Business, Sony Music Entertainment.
Eric Daugan, Senior Vice President, Commercial Strategy, Warner Music Europe commented “The introduction of this impressive file format represents a further step forward in the quality and speed of the digital music experience that can be offered to partners and fans.”
Ian Whitfield, Vice President, Digital Development for EMI Music said: “EMI is always looking to support products and services that give consumers the best music experience on the devices and platforms of their choice. With Dolby Pulse Omnifone are enhancing their service with higher quality file formats and greater flexibility which will be a great benefit to their customers.”