At NAB, Fraunhofer IIS will demonstrate how the HE-AAC Multichannel and MPEG Surround codecs can be used to enable the best possible DASH streaming experience from bit rates as low as 48 kbit/s for 5.1 audio with MPEG Surround up to transparency with AAC-LC at 320 kbit/s. Fraunhofer’s codecs allow service providers to enable the best possible consumer experience by combining highest coding efficiency with the dynamic ability to change audio bitrates in order to adapt to changing network conditions as consumers stream content to their variety of devices.

Fraunhofer IIS’ Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) family is the universal solution for streaming and broadcasting, with a presence in over 5 billion devices. Leading HTML5 web browsers such as Apple® Safari®, Microsoft® Internet Explorer 9® and Google® Chrome® support HE-AAC Multichannel decoding natively. MPEG DASH and the growing Internet Streaming landscape will benefit from AAC’s ubiquity, audio switching capabilities, full metadata support and continuous innovation.

“Fraunhofer IIS has been actively involved in the development and standardization of MPEG DASH from the beginning”, says Harald Popp, head of the Multimedia Realtime Systems department at Fraunhofer IIS. “Our AAC family of audio codecs natively complements the MPEG ecosystem of H.264 video, MP4 file format and MPEG DASH transport.”

Fraunhofer is a member of the DASH Promoters Group, a consortium of industry leaders who promote the new adaptive streaming standard.

For more information, visit http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/audio.