Researchers at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) have squeezed Singapore into the growing audio compression space when their contributions to the definition of a new audio compression standard were accepted by the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) in June this year.

MPEG is a body within the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) which defines international standards for audio and video compression, such as compression standards used in MP3s, VCDs and DVDs.

The MPEG4 Scaleable to Lossless Standard (SLS) is a next generation audio compression standard that improves upon the popular MP3 format that is widely used in digital audio players such as the Apple iPod, enabling higher quality audio to be stored in smaller file sizes. The team of researchers at A*Star, led by Susanto Rahardja, the division director of the media division at the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), had previously developed its patented Advanced Audio Zip (AAZ) audio compression technology, which formed part of its contribution to the MPEG4-SLS standard.

According to Mike Loh, manager at Exploit Technologies, the commercialisation arm of A*Star, the licensing of the new standard will be handled by Via Licensing, a San Francisco-based firm specialising in intellectual property licensing for media technologies.

It is expected to take another six months before the standard will be ready to be licensed.

While A*Star could be sitting on potentially large licensing revenues should the new standard be widely adopted, Mr Loh admitted that it was early days yet, and that they are still in negotiations with major music labels, as well as consumer electronic and mobile phone manufacturers.

Meanwhile, the researchers are working on software development kits (SDK) for the new standard, which are targeted at consumer electronics and mobile phone manufacturers.

These SDKs can help manufacturers shorten the development time for implementing the new MPEG4-SLS standard in their devices by at least a few months.

They are also working on a trial software application which could let the public try out the new audio compression standard by downloading it onto their computers to encode and playback their music files in the new compression standard.

This is expected to be released by the end of September.

This article first appeared in BT on September 04, 2006