23 April 2001, Las Vegas, NV USA

The new MPEG-4 system Low Delay Advanced Audio Coding (AAC-LD), developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS-A, will be presented at NAB 2001. This new technology offers a breakthrough in the quality of audio transmission for telephone systems. At a data rate of 64 kbps, AAC-LD offers sound quality that is comparable to MP3, but with 80% lower transmission delay. Thus, this latest MPEG-4 audio standard is the perfect companion to ISDN and next-generation UMTS mobile telephone channels to enable high-fidelity audio transmission. It also makes possible conference systems with low delay and excellent quality.

Telos Systems and Fraunhofer IIS-A are demonstrating the world’s first implementation of AAC-LD in real products – the new Telos Zephyr Xstream ISDN codec family, which is being introduced at NAB 2001. The original Zephyr was first to use MP3, a feature that helped to make it the number one choice for sending broadcast quality audio over ISDN – and perhaps the most successful digital audio product in the radio broadcasting industry ever.

Fraunhofer and Telos will showcase AAC-LD and the new Telos Zephyr Xstream throughout NAB 2001. Demonstrations will be offered at Fraunhofer’s booth, E5847 at E-topia, and Telos will be showing the new Zephyr family at their booth, R2263 in the Las Vegas Convention Center.

About Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS-A:
Germany based Fraunhofer IIS-A is the leading research laboratory in the area of audio coding. For more than ten years, Fraunhofer IIS-A has actively driven forward the development of audio compression algorithms. Fraunhofer is the primary developer of MP3 (MPEG audio Layer 3), the most popular format on the Internet, as well as MPEG-2 AAC, the most efficient audio compression algorithm currently available. www.iis.fhg.de/amm

About Telos:
Telos Systems is the leading manufacturer of MPEG ISDN codecs, sophisticated on-air telephone systems, and other innovative digital audio products for radio and television broadcast studios. USA headquarters are in Cleveland, Ohio and European operations are based in Freising, Germany.