Audio codec for mobile multimedia applications

This contribution reports on the work in 3GPP release 6 on the standardization of a new audio codec for mobile multimedia applications including packet-switched streaming (PSS) and multimedia messaging (MMS). First, the design constraints, performance requirements, test plans, selection rules were finalized for both PSS/MMS audio codecs and for the extended AMR-WB codec (AMR-WB+). The candidate codecs were as follows: MPEG4 HE-AAC codec ("AAC+1') for low and high bit-rate range, coding technologies codec ("Enhanced AAC+") for low and high bit-rate range, and Ericsson, Nokia and VoiceAge AMR-WB+ candidate codec for low bit-rate range. Next, extensive subjective listening testing was conducted. The test results showed good performance for the enhanced AAC+ and for the AMR-WB+ candidates.