MPEG-H Audio

Fraunhofer’s interactive and immersive audio system for TV broadcasting and streaming, based on MPEG-H Audio

Hear your home team™: Interactivity offers a personalized listening experience

Our system offers interactivity using MPEG-H’s object coding, which allows viewers to adjust the sound mix to their preferences, boosting hard-to-understand dialogue or creating a “home team“-mix of sports broadcasts. This feature may also be used to efficiently add objects for dialogue in additional languages or VI descriptions to a broadcast, spending only 20-40 kbit/s for each language.

Immersive sound offers cinema-like realism

The system may transmit immersive sound with additional front and rear height speaker channels or the Higher-Order Ambisonics sound field technology, improving today’s surround sound broadcasts and streams to provide a truly realistic and immersive audio experience on par with the latest cinema sound systems.

Immersive sound may also be enjoyed with devices such as 3D soundbars, enabling mainstream consumers to experience high-quality immersive audio without the complexity of adding new speakers.

Unsurpassed coding efficiency

Since the system uses the new MPEG-H Audio codec based on the evolution of the AAC family as well as new technologies, the additional channels or objects needed for 3D sound can be transmitted at bit rates similar to those used today for 5.1 surround broadcasts.

Internet-ready for a great listening experience on every device

The MPEG-H Audio based system offers DASH support for stutter-free streaming and audio I-frames for easy DASH bit stream switching and easy splicing for ad insertion. It includes multi-platform loudness control to provide a tailored experience for a viewer’s device and listening environment.

Speaker-foolproof rendering for the best sound from legacy speakers

Improved rendering technologies in the system offer the ability to play any content format on any speaker configuration and may be able to correct for misplaced speakers in the consumer’s listening room. The renderer also offers improved downmix quality by avoiding signal cancellation and may render a limited impression of height without height speakers, for legacy 5.1 or 2.0 consumers.

MPEG-H Audio, the next-generation audio standard for TV, streaming and VR, was developed for a listening experience going beyond surround sound. Immersive 3D sound for VR is achieved by adding height information to the sound mix. Thanks to the efficiency of the new codec, 3D audio can be delivered at bitrates as low as 200 kbit/s which makes MPEG-H Audio the audio codec of choice for VR streaming services.

MPEG-H Audio can carry audio channels, audio objects and ambisonics audio plus metadata within a single audio bitstream. Audio channels provide a great way to deliver immersive audio while dynamic audio objects enable directors to use audio cues to guide the audience through 360 stories. In this context, they also allow for a very precise placement of sound events around the listener’s head and at a specific distance from the ear. Ambisonics audio on the other hand provides a convenient way to capture immersive audio scenes, for instance on set, plus they make it easier to realize point of view manipulation and head rotation at playback.