APTX licenses audio technology to Creative Labs

LONDON — APTX, the Belfast, Northern Ireland-based developer and licensor of apt-X audio compression technology, has licensed its technology to Creative Technology, the digital entertainment products group famous for its Sound Blaster sound cards for PCs.

Potential applications of apt-X technology in digital entertainment products from Creative include wireless speaker products, wireless gaming headsets, and multi-room home entertainment systems.

"APTX anticipates an exciting future for apt-X through this technology agreement with Creative, and together we will deliver solutions that discerning consumers are demanding" said Mike Canevaro, VP Licensing Business Development of APTX.

APTX focuses on advanced audio codec technology and has developed standard apt-X, Enhanced apt-X, apt-X Live, apt-X Lossless, and most recently apt-X Scalable – through licensing agreements with original equipment manufacturers in broadcast, telecoms, professional audio, and CE markets.

Earlier this week, APTX said its apt-X Lossless adaptive audio coding scheme significantly out-performs other lossless audio coding schemes, including FLAC, in a number of emerging application scenarios that depend upon the efficient transmission of high-quality audio over wireless channels and networks.

The claim is based on performance data "obtained from rigorous and intensive laboratory testing of apt-X Lossless against other types of lossless audio codecs using a set of industry-standard reference audio samples."

The improvements in performance demonstrated by apt-X Lossless relative to FLAC, for example, are include a significant gain in compression ratio – up to 10 per cent more data reduction – at time delays under 2 milliseconds. This extremely low degree of latency (sub 2 ms) is of critical importance in applications involving video, interactive games, and 2-way communications.

The company said these improvements will be of particular interest to manufacturers of wireless audio devices as they have a positive impact on audio quality, bandwidth efficiency, power consumption, and processor load. Such factors are critical in the design viability of next-generation consumer devices, such as 4G/LTE smart-phones and wearable, portable media players, and go-anywhere, touch-screen tablet computers.

The results of the performance testing of apt-X Lossless, together with a technical description of the architecture itself, are to be formally presented at the Audio Engineering Society in a paper session at the 127 AES Convention in New York City, October 9-12, 2009.

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