QDesign
Music Codec 2 Ships With QuickTime 4 Public Beta
Sounds better
than MP3. Streams better than MP3. Hear the difference!
Las Vegas, NAB 99 (Booth#S4634)- April 19th, 1999
- QDesign Corporation, a leading provider of digital audio compression
technologies, announced today the release of QDesign Music Codec 2. QDesign
Music Codec 2 provides even higher quality compression than previous versions,
making the software the highest quality solution for delivering audio
on the Web. Decoders and a basic edition of the encoder will ship with
the QuickTime 4 public beta, the latest version of Apple Computer's award-winning,
industry-standard software architecture for creating and publishing digital
media for Mac OS and Windows. A professional edition of the encoder is
available from QDesign.
With the Professional Edition of the QDesign Music Codec 2, the Company
has added new technologies that maximize performance, streaming robustness
and ease of use. This allows users to easily optimize audio quality for
streaming and multimedia authoring. Advanced packetizer technology has
been integrated into the QDesign Music Codec 2 that minimizes effects
of network dropouts so that real-time streaming over the Internet sounds
great. QDesign has also introduced its AutoPilot technology, an intelligent
engine that dynamically controls the basic audio processing and advanced
perceptual coding parameters in its previous versions. QDesign Music Codec
2 is simply designed to sound better, encode faster and be easier to use.
"The QDesign Music Codec played an important role in the success of QuickTime
3 by enabling developers to produce outstanding audio quality at data
rates suitable for delivery over the Internet," says Frank Casanova II,
Director of QuickTime Product Marketing. "Including QDesign Music Codec
2 in our beta of QuickTime 4 is helping to ensure that thousands of QuickTime
content developers continue to have access to the best audio compression
technology for real-time streaming over the Internet."
"We are very excited about this new release of the QDesign Music Codec
2. We have worked closely with the QuickTime team to ensure that this
new version of the QDesign Music Codec delivers the highest quality results
in QuickTime 4 for Internet audio streaming," says Richard J. Beaton,
president and CTO of QDesign. "Two fundamental aspects of audio that heavily
impact the perception of music quality are optimized -- stereo imaging
and frequency bandwidth. As a result of our technology advancements, the
QDesign Music Codec streams 44.1kHz stereo sound over a 28K and 58K modem
at even higher quality than before. This enables audio enthusiasts to
encode audio at a fraction of the file size compared to older technologies,
such as MP3."
Fully supported in the QuickTime 4 public beta, audio and multimedia professionals
can take advantage of the highest compressed audio quality for all content
produced for CD-ROM and the Web. Anyone recording music, from musicians
to major record labels, can now publish and promote high-quality music
for the Internet. Individuals can easily combine that audio with other
QuickTime media types, including midi, lyrics, video, animation and interactive
images, to create truly compelling downloadable and streaming multimedia
content.
About QDesign
Founded in 1995, QDesign Corporation has been delivering state-of-the
art audio solutions to the broadcast and new media industries. The Company
introduced the world's first MPEG-2 stereo compression software in October
1996; making available for the first time, high-quality, high-performance
MPEG sound to all broadcast and studio professionals. In January 1998,
QDesign launched the QDesign Music Codec as the Internet audio solution
for QuickTime 3, bringing to audio and multimedia professionals "the Best
Web Audio" product for 1999, according to New Media Magazine. QDesign's
codec technologies appear in hardware processors, digital audio production,
automation and distribution systems as well as professional and consumer
multimedia software. For additional information, please visit QDesign
at www.qdesign.com.
Contact:
QDesign Corporation
media@qdesign.com
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