Wave Issue 2005 1/31/00 Article 7-02

***Lucent and Blue Spike Announce Alliance for Digital Music
Security
(January 24)

Lucent Technologies and Blue Spike, a developer of secure digital
watermarking applications that enable copyrights to be embedded
into audio or video content, announced an alliance that will
incorporate the Lucent Enhanced Perceptual Audio Coder (ePAC)
into Blue Spike's music security solution.

The ePAC coder will be integrated into Blue Spike's "end-to-end"
solution for music security, which enables producers to offer
piracy-proof music products with high audio quality for both
electronic delivery and packaged media. Music packages embedded
with the Blue Spike digital watermarking solution can now gain
CD-quality sound with ePAC while maintaining the integrity of the
original source material, even when mixed with enhanced text,
images, and video. The scaleable system can be used on a range
of products, including portable music players, personal computers
and high-end stereo equipment.

ePAC is a version of the Lucent Perceptual Audio Coder (PAC)
developed by Bell Labs, the research and development arm of
Lucent Technologies. PAC is an audio compression algorithm with
high-quality audio at low bit rates. At 128 kilobits per second,
ePAC offers CD-transparent stereo sound.

ePAC uses psychoacoustic modeling - that is, a representation of
how humans hear sound - to compress music in a way that is not
noticeable to the ear. Music is compressed at a rate of 11 to 1,
thus reducing the transmission time/bandwidth and storage by the
same ratio, while still retaining its fidelity.

Lucent's ePAC coder is interoperable with RealNetworks' G2 Player
and has been licensed to e.Digital for its handheld Internet
music device and to Lydstrom for its Songbank home Internet
stereo device. The ePAC coder will also be integrated into
VedaLabs' music software and hardware platforms.