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Can you hear me now? —Technique could allow high-quality calls and music on low-quality connections.
Enlarge / An illustrated depiction of data in an audio wave. Meta AI Last week, Meta announced an AI-powered audio compression method called "EnCodec" that can reportedly compress audio 10 times smaller than the MP3 format at 64kbps with no loss in quality. Meta says this technique could dramatically improve the sound quality of speech on low-bandwidth connections, such as phone calls in areas with spotty service. The technique also works for music. Meta debuted the technology on October 25 in a paper titled "High Fidelity Neural Audio Compression," authored by Meta AI researchers Alexandre Défossez, Jade Copet, Gabriel Synnaeve, and Yossi Adi. Meta also summarized the research on its blog devoted to EnCodec. Enlarge / Meta claims its new audio encoder/decoder can compress audio 10x smaller than MP3. Meta AI Meta describes its method as a three-part system trained to compress audio to a desired target size. First, the encoder transforms uncompressed data into a lower frame rate "latent space" representation. The "quantizer" then compresses the representation to the target size while keeping track of the most important information that will later be used to rebuild the original signal. (This compressed signal is what gets sent through a network or saved to disk.) Finally, the decoder turns the compressed data back into audio in real time using a neural network on a single CPU. Enlarge / A block diagram illustrating how Meta's EnCodec compression works. Meta AI Meta's use of discriminators proves key to creating a method for compressing the audio as much as possible without losing key elements of a signal that make it distinctive and recognizable:
It's worth noting that using a neural network for audio compression and decompression is far from new—especially for speech compression—but Meta's researchers claim they are the first group to apply the technology to 48 kHz stereo audio (slightly better than CD's 44.1 kHz sampling rate), which is typical for music files distributed on the Internet. As for applications, Meta says this AI-powered "hypercompression of audio" could support "faster, better-quality calls" in bad network conditions. And, of course, being Meta, the researchers also mention EnCodec's metaverse implications, saying the technology could eventually deliver "rich metaverse experiences without requiring major bandwidth improvements." Beyond that, maybe we'll also get really small music audio files out of it someday. For now, Meta's new tech remains in the research phase, but it points toward a future where high-quality audio can use less bandwidth, which would be great news for mobile broadband providers with overburdened networks from streaming media. Go to discussion... What is audio compression codec?In software, an audio codec is a computer program implementing an algorithm that compresses and decompresses digital audio data according to a given audio file or streaming media audio coding format.
Is a codec used for file compression?A codec is a hardware- or software-based process that compresses and decompresses large amounts of data. Codecs are used in applications to play and create media files for users, as well as to send media files over a network. The term is a blend of the words coder and decoder, as well as compression and decompression.
Which codec is best for audio?AAC and AptX are both steps up from SBC and are generally mainstream, though different devices might support either or both (AAC is most common on Apple phones and tablets, while AptX is the preferred standard for Android).
How audio files are compressed?Compressed lossy audio files are made by removing certain types of audio data to shrink the file size. Lossy compression can be adjusted to compress audio a lot, or to compress audio very little. As a result, most audio file formats strive for a balance between audio quality and file size.
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