Fraunhofer IIS, the world’s renowned source for audio and multimedia technologies, and Sonnox, the pioneer plug-in designer and manufacturer, today announced the premiere of the Sonnox Fraunhofer Codec Plug-In. The new plug-in is the consumer version of the TecAward-nominated Sonnox Fraunhofer Pro-Codec plug-in, used by leading professional mastering studios around the world.

The Sonnox Fraunhofer Codec Plug-In provides mastering quality audio codecs to aspiring musicians for use in consumer music recording software, such as GarageBand and Sonar.

“Consumers now have access to the full range of genuine Fraunhofer codecs, the best encoders on the market from the main inventor of the mp3 and co-developer of AAC,” said Harald Popp, head of the Multimedia Realtime Systems department at Fraunhofer IIS.

Musicians can critically audition and encode audio mixes to multiple formats within a digital audio workstation (DAW) and pre-listen to the content before uploading it online. This allows users to create optimized mixes for the specific codec and bit-rate that their distribution chain requires.

Sonnox Fraunhofer Codec Plug-In features include an easy to use interface for offline encoding and decoding and basic meta-data editing. The plug-in supports wav and aiff files and works with audio software supporting VST, RTAS, AAX or Audio Units plug-ins on Mac and Windows. Just like the professional version, the Sonnox Fraunhofer Codec Plug-In enables audio enthusiasts to use high-quality, bandwidth-saving MPEG audio codecs, such as AAC, HE-AAC, mp3, or the lossless formats HD-AAC and mp3HD directly in their favorite music recording software. The Sonnox Fraunhofer Codec is the first consumer software offering Fraunhofer’s surround codecs MPEG Surround, AAC multi-channel and HE-AAC multi-channel.

The Sonnox Fraunhofer Pro-Codec, from which the consumer plug-in was based, is a highly successful plug-in for professional audio workstation software that enables mix and mastering engineers to audition up to five codecs in real time within a DAW environment, produce an optimized mix and match to encode multiple formats simultaneously.

The Sonnox Fraunhofer Codec Plug-in will be available the first quarter of 2012 at a lower price than the Pro-Codec. Consumers will be able to purchase the plug-in either from the Sonnox website or from an authorized reseller.

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