INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL AUDIO CODING AND STANDARDS

The topic of digital audio coding is of interest to a wide audience, including engineering and industrial professionals working in telecommunications, hardware design, music, and software product development. 'Introduction to Digital Audio Coding and Standards' provides a detailed introduction to the methods, implementations, and official standards of state-of-the-art audio coding technology. In the book, the theory and implementation of each of the basic coder building blocks is addressed. The building blocks are then fit together into a full coder and the reader is shown how to judge the performance of such a coder. Finally, the authors discuss the features, choices, and performance of the main state-of-the-art coders defined in the ISO/IEC MPEG and HDTV standards and in commercial use today. The ultimate goal of this book is to present the reader with a solid enough understanding of the major issues in the theory and implementation of perceptual audio coders that they are able to build their own simple audio codec. There is no other source available where a non-professional has access to the true secrets of audio coding. This book is based on a graduate course at Stanford University going into its 7th year. The subject material has been fine-tuned through this process to be accessible to readers of vastly differing backgrounds, levels of preparation, and interests. Exercises that apply the concepts covered are included at the end of each chapter.