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AUDIO COMPRESSION IN MPEG TECHNOLOGY

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International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 3, Issue 12, December 2013 1
ISSN 2250-3153

Audio Compression in MPEG Technology

Manas Arora,Neha Maurya

Electronics and Communication Department, BBDNIIT

Abstract- MPEG stands for MOVING PICTURE EXPERTS MPEG technology the perpetual parts of audio signals are
GROUP is a standard for video and audio compression for maintained. MPEG technology also provides audio forward and
eliminating the noisy signals from the transmitted signals from reverse features by maintaining bit stream of the audio signal [5].
the satellite. Audio compression is a basic method defined under The MPEG technology runs by different standards which
MPEG-1 and MPEG-4 which by coding techniques compress consist of different parts defining aspect of technology. These
audio signals to filter out undesired signals .This paper focuses standards in technology specify Profiles and Levels. Profiles are
on the MPEG technology, need and coding technique for audio set of tools that are available, and Levels define the range of
compression. appropriate values for the properties associated with them. The
standards were revised by amendments MPEG technology has
Index Terms- MPEG; Audio compression; ISO; IEC; bit rate; standardized the following compression formats [5]:
DCT; standards; MPEG encoder; audio signal; filter.  MPEG-1 (1993)
Coding of moving pictures and associated audio for digital
storage media at up to about 1.5 Mbit/s It was basically designed
I. INTRODUCTION to allow moving pictures and sound to be encoded into the bit
rate of a Compact Disc. It is used on Video CD and can be used
M PEG is an acronym for MOVING PICTURE EXERTS
GROUP that was formed by ISO and IEC. It sets the
standard for audio and video compression and its transmission.
for low-quality video on DVD Video. It was used in digital
satellite/cable TV services, MPEG-1 down samples the images,
Today in the field of communication compression standards from as well as uses picture rates of only 24–30 Hz, resulting in a
MPEG-1 to MPEG DASH have been developed that give digital moderate quality.
output. MPEG is a first international algorithm for digital audio  MPEG-2 (1995):
compression that showed high fidelity. It transports video and audio standards for broadcast-quality
Data compression is a technique in which data content of the television. MPEG-2 standard is considerably broader in scope
input signal to system is compressed so that original signal is than MPEG-1 It is also used on Blu-ray Discs
filtered out and unwanted or undesired signals are removed and  MPEG-3:
true digital signal is obtained as output. Therefore when audio MPEG-3 dealt with standardizing scalable and multi-
signals are used in the form of data it is termed as AUDIO resolution compression and basically intended for HDTV
COMPRESSION. In this compression technique reducing the bit compressionMPEG-3 is different from MP3 [2,3], defined under
rate which is required is an important task for perfect design of MPEG-1 Audio Layer III.
an audio system. High quality audio transmission and storage are  MPEG-4 (1998):
the basic goals of audio compression.[1] Coding of audio-visual objects (ISO/IEC 14496) is done. In
Audio compression involves transparent coding of hi-fidelity this coding with additional complexity are made to achieve
audio signals at the lowest possible bit rates. And the quality is higher compression factors [2].It is closer to computer graphics
maintained with the appropriate maintenance of standards for applications. Defines compressed bit stream describes three-
high fidelity. The compressed audio signals are characterized by dimensional shapes and surface texture [2] MPEG-4 supports
a wide bandwidth with sampling rate of 44.1 kHz and a high Intellectual Property MPEG-4 AVC (or MPEG-4 Part 10 or
resolution quantization of each sample of the signal at a rate of H.264). MPEG-4 AVC is used on HD DVD and Blu-ray Discs,
16 bits per sample which uses pulse code modulation (PCM) [1] along with VC-1 and MPEG-2.MPEG-4 involves compression
The Audio compression basically utilizes MPEG 1 standard schemes in Brazil (ISDB-TB) and JAPAN [6].
which is a generic audio compression standard. Audio  MPEG-7 (2002):
compression in MPEG unlike vocal coders have coders known as Multimedia content description interface defined under
encoders that do not assume the nature of source which generates ISO/IEC 15938.
audio signals but coder itself designs by hearing ability of the  MPEG-21 (2001):
consumer at the output Multimedia framework defines under ISO/IEC 21000

MPEG is a standard for a multimedia framework and

II. MPEG TECHNOLOGY provides the intellectual property management and protection
The MPEG is a generic audio compression standard utilizing Moreover, recently MPEG international standards are increased
technology which compresses audio signal to make it audible to for multiple[6]
the human ear and remove the unwanted signals introduces in the
communication path without assuming nature of audio source. In MPEG technologies based on different applications are:

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International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 3, Issue 12, December 2013 2
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 MPEG-A. Finally frequency-to-time mapping produces decoded audio data

Defined under ISO/IEC 23000 for the purpose for stream. In the audio compression DCT is used under MPEG
multimedia application formats [6] technology.
 MPEG-B (2006): Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) is a main transform or
Defined as systems technologies under ISO/IEC 23001for mapping method used in the MPES technology which maps the
binary MPEG format for XML Fragment Request Units, Bit time domain into frequency domain A DCT expresses a finite
stream Syntax Description Language (BSD) [7]. sequence of data points in terms of a sum of cosine functions
 MPEG-C (2006): oscillating at different frequencies. The discrete cosine transform
Define as MPEG video technologies and under ISO/IEC is a linear, invertible function F: RN RN (where R denotes the
23002 for the accuracy requirements of implementation of set of real numbers), or equivalently an invertible N × N square
integer-output 8x8 inverse discrete cosine transform[8] matrix. Mathematically DCT is calculated from (1)
 MPEG-D (2007):
Defined as MPEG audio technologies under ISO/IEC 23003
for MPEG Surround [9] SAOC (Spatial Audio Object Coding)   1 
and USAC (Unified Speech and Audio Coding) N 1    n  2 k 
 MPEG-E (2007): X k   x n cos    
It is defined for Multimedia Middleware. Under ISO/IEC n 0  N 
23004 [10] for multimedia application programming interface  
(API) and component models  
 MPEG-V (2011): k  0,.......N  1 (1)
Defined as media context and control and under ISO/IEC
23005[11] for information exchange with Virtual Worlds The cosine graphs define the nature of frequency used in
 MPEG-M (2010): DCT transform and define the frequency of the audio signal.
It is a MPEG extensible Middleware (MXM) standard Basic cosine graphs used in the discrete cosine transform are:
defined under ISO/IEC 23006 and defines MXM architecture and
technologies, API and protocols for MPEG extensible
middleware (MXM)[12,13].
 MPEG-U (2010):
It is rich media user interfaces which iis defined under
ISO/IEC 23007.
 MPEG-H (2013):
It is for high efficiency coding and media delivery in
heterogeneous environments.
 MPEG-DASH (2012):
It is latest information technology standard used for dynamic
adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH) and is defined under
ISO/IEC 23009 and is used for media presentation, description
and segment formats

III. AUDIO COMPRESSION Figure 1: Cosine graphs used in DCT

Audio compression enables efficient storage and
transmission of data. There may be varying amounts of The audio compression using DCT method is an efficient
compression in an audio data. There may be different levels of method by which we can change the frequency content of the
system complexity and compressed quality of audio data. The signal and analyze the signals in different frequency ranges in a
recorded waveform is reduced with varying amounts for the fixed frequency domain. DCT also effectively compresses the
purpose of transmission with or without loss. Therefore there are audio signals and maintain the audibility feature of audio signals
two types of compression lossy are lossless. The digital audio
data is readily processed through mixing, filtering and
equalization. This is now subjected to an encoder that uses fewer
bits than that present in the original audio data. This results in IV. NEED OF AUDIO COMPRESSION IN MPEG
reducing the transmission bandwidth of digital audio streams and TECHNOLOGY
storage size of audio files. [15] The basic MPEG standard for audio compression is MPEG-1
Audio compression may be lossy or lossless Lossy as video is not designed for DBS (Direct Broadcast Satellite)
compression is transparent to human audibility but lossless being TV’s. MPEG-1 audio compression supports both stereo and
have a compressing factor from 6 to 1[17,18]. mono formats.
At the decoder, bit stream unpacking of encoded bit stream Basic question arises the need of audio compression?
is done. It is followed by frequency sample reconstruction. Answer lies within the requirement of appropriate bit rate for

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International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 3, Issue 12, December 2013 3
ISSN 2250-3153

high quality audio. Bit rate is defined as number of sample per

second which is given by Rbits calculates from (2) I Filter Coding Formatting
N
P
Rbits  f S  n (2) U
T Psychoacousti
c model Encoded
The requirement of achieving high bit rate and clarity of audio
audio signals basically defines the need of audio compression MPEG ENCODER
[14].
Figure 3.1: MPEG ENCODER R block diagram
V. AUDIO COMPRESSION TECHNIQUE IN MPEG Bit stream Reconstruction of
An audio signal is a complex signal which has a wide /Unpacking frequency samples
spectrum and MPEG helps in perceptual phenomena for our ears.
The large frequencies and smaller frequencies below masking Encoded audio
threshold are inaudible to human ears. MPEG standard helps in signal Mapping into
defining standard and filtering audio signals in the available time
bandwidth and maintains signal to quantization ratio. In MPEG-1
audio compression is performed as given in figure 1 and involves Output
two process.Filter bank which uses filters divides spectrum of
incoming signals in sub bands .Quantizer quantizes the sub bands
15] MPEG DECODER
I?P
Filter bank Quantizer Figure 3.2: MPEG DECODER block diagram

The MPEG audio standard has three distinct layers for

compression.
Layer I is the basic algorithm
Bit Output Layers II and III are enhancements of Layer I. Each
Masking
successive layer improves the compression performance at the
increasing cost of encoder and decoder complexity.
a) Layer 1. The Layer I algorithm uses the basic filter bank
Figure 2: Block Diagram of MPEG-1 Encoder which is found in all layers. This filter bank divides the audio
signal into 32 constant-width frequency bands. The filters are
The basic method by which audio compression in MPEG simple and provide time and frequency resolutions by which it is
technology is done by MPEG encoder and decompression by easily perceived by human ears The design of Layer I has three
MPEG decoder. Figure 3 shows block diagrams of the concessions. First, the 32 constant width bands which do not
MPEG/audio encoder and decoder.[15] accurately reflect the ear’s critical frequency bands. Second, the
In MPEG compression the input audio stream passes filter bank and its inverse are not lossless transformations.
through a filter bank which divides the input into multiple sub Thirdly, adjacent filter bands have a significant frequency
bands. The input audio stream is simultaneously also passed overlap [15]
through a psychoacoustic model which is used to determine the b) Layer II. The Layer II algorithm is a simple enhancement
signal-to-mask ratio of each sub band. The bit or noise allocation of Layer I. It improves compression performance by coding data
block utilizes the output of psychoacoustic model and a decision in larger groups. By the Layer II encoder forms frames of 3 by 12
is made about the total number of code bits which are available by 32 that is total of 1152 samples per audio channel as
for quantization process. compared to Layer I codes data in single groups of 12 samples
Code bits also help in removing quantization noise. The for each sub band .Layer II removes stereo redundancy coding
output of compressor is quantized audio samples and these and there is one bit allocation The encoder encodes with a unique
formats of the data are transformed into a decodable bit stream. scale factor for each group of 12 samples to avoid audible
The MPEG decompression of the audio signals simply distortion. The Layer II algorithm improves performance as it
reverses the formatting and then reconstruction of quantized code uses efficient code for representing the bit allocation, the scale
bits is done then reconstructs the quantized sub band values, factor values, and the quantized samples [15]
which are finally transformed into the set of sub band values into c) Layer III The Layer III algorithm is a much more refined
a time-domain audio signal.[15] approach.[16,17] though it is based on the same filter bank found
in Layers I and II. Layer III compensates for some filter bank
deficiencies by processing the filter outputs with a modified
discrete cosine transform (MDCT).[15]
These al the three layers completely design the methods of
audio compression in MPEG technology.

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International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 3, Issue 12, December 2013 4
ISSN 2250-3153

VI. CURRENT TRENDS [5] http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/

[6] ISO/IEC TR 23000-1:2007 – Information technology – Multimedia
MPEG technology is an ever developing technology in the application format (MPEG-A) – Part 1: Purpose for multimedia application
field of communication which advances day by day as audibility formats
is the chief medium used by the receiver in the communication [7] ISO. "ISO/IEC 23001-1:2006 – Information technology – MPEG systems
.Currently MPEG are used in satellite communications, DBS technologies – Part 1: Binary MPEG format for XML
TV’s, TATSKY dish television network which uses MPEG- [8] ISO. "ISO/IEC 23002-1:2006 – Information technology – MPEG video
technologies – Part 1: Accuracy requirements for implementation of
4,MPEG-1,MPEG-2 and MPEG-DASH. MPEG-D is being used integer-output 8x8 inverse discrete cosine transform
in audio technologies like MPEG SURROUND, SAOC (Spatial [9] ISO. "ISO/IEC 23003-1:2007 – Information technology – MPEG audio
Audio Object Coding) and USAC (UNIFIED SPEECH AND technologies – Part 1: MPEG Surround
AUDIO CODING).MPEG dynamic adaptive streaming over [10] ISO. "ISO/IEC 23004-1:2007 – Information technology – Multimedia
HTTP (DASH) technology is an upcoming technology in the Middleware – Part 1: Architecture
current era of communication which enhances and maintains [11] ISO. "ISO/IEC 29116-1:2008 – Information technology – Supplemental
fidelity of audio signals. media technologies – Part 1: Media streaming application format protocols
[12] http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/working_documents.htm#MPEG-V
[13] Satellite Communications,Seventh Edition 2009,Agarwal D.C,Khana
Publications,p-p 368-369
VII. CONCLUSION
[14] Davis Yan Pan,”Digital Audio Compression”, Digital Technical Journal
MPEG is a basic standard for designing and compressing Vol. 5 No. 2, Spring 1993
both audio and video signals which are then transmitted to the [15] K. Brandenburg and J. D. Johnston, "Second Generation Perceptual Audio
receiver end. MPEG 1 and MPEG 4 are standards dedicated to Coding: The Hybrid Coder," Preprint 2937, 88th Audio Engineering Society
Convention, Montreaux (1990).
audio compression which by coding techniques compress audio
[16] K. Brandenburg, J. Herre, J. D. Johnston, Y. Mahieux, and E. Schroeder,
signals and noisy or undesired signals are filtered. "ASPEC: Adaptive Spectral Perceptual Entropy Coding of High Quality
Music Signals," Preprint 3011, 90th Audio Engineering Society
Convention, Paris (1991)
ACKNOWLEDGMENT [17] Pan, D “A tutorial on MPEG/audio compression” MultiMedia, IEEE
(Volume:2 , Issue: 2 ),2002
We are thankful to our college for providing time to time [18] Gersho, A. “Advances in speech and audio compression” Proceedings of
help in studying the topic and providing us a background to the IEEE Volume:82, Issue: 6 ,August 2002
understand it in deeper details.

REFERENCES AUTHORS
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PROCESSING. VOL. 41. NO. 12. DECEMBER 1993 student, Babu Banarsi Das Northern India Institute of
[2] The MPEG Handbook:MPEG-1,MPEG-2,MPEG-4,Fourth Technology, manasarora14@gmail.com
edition,2004,Watkinson J,Focal Press,p-p 4-5 Second Author – Neha Maurya, M.Tech (Digital
[3] Salomon D, "Video Compression: Data compression” Springer ISBN 978- Communication) student, Babu Banarsi Das Northern India
1-84628-602-5,2007 Institute of Technology, neha6maurya@gmail.com
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