DAB likely to adopt the AAC+ codec next week

27th September 2006

In an interview about the evolving DAB system on Swedish Radio yesterday (the interviewer obviously speaks in Swedish, because it's on Swedish Radio, but Kelly Griffiths answers in English - starts 11 mins 10 secs into the programme), the Project Director at WorldDAB, Kelly Griffiths, commented on the number of radio stations that would be able to transmit:

"It will allow more channels using the same frequency and the same multiplex, so about three-times the amount of channels will be available."

That is obviously a reference to the DAB system adopting the AAC+ audio codec (the official name of the AAC+ codec is HE-AAC, which stands for High Efficiency AAC, and it is AAC+'s high efficiency that will allow 3-times as many stations to transmit and/or the audio quality to be hugely improved), so I rang up WorldDAB to ask them to confirm that the DAB system is being upgraded, but they said that the information is confidential, but they will be issuing a press release on the subject early next week.

Watch this space...

There was also a web page on the Swedish Radio website on this story, for which there's an automated Swedish to English translation of the article here.