Design and implementation of a DSP based MPEG-1 audio encoder

The speed of current PCs enable them to decode and play an MPEG bitstream in real-time. The encode process, however, cannot be done in real-time. This paper presents a low-cost real-time fixed point DSP implementation of an MPEG-1 layer 1 audio encoder. The DSP transmits the encoded MPEG bitstream to a PC through a standard bi-directional parallel port, which the PC can immediately save to disk. The encoder is capable of transmitting bitstreams to the PC at bit-rates from 32 kbps-320 kbps.