LOSSLESS DIGITAL MUSIC

Even the fussiest audiophiles can now embrace digital music, with today’s launch by Soundbuzz of Asia’s first online store offering high fidelity songs, supported by technology from Exploit Technologies.

In a world’s first, the store utilises a pioneering technology, known as SLS (Scalable-to-Lossless), which allows consumers to purchase a standard quality song, and then “top up” to receive a high audio fidelity (lossless) version of the same song at a later date. Consumers are also able to synchronise the purchased songs to their mobile handsets.

The store is the outcome of a partnership between Soundbuzz and Exploit Technologies Pte Ltd, the marketing and commercialisation arm of Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), supported by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA).

It enables consumers to decide on the quality of music they wish to purchase and enjoy it on devices of their choice utilizing technology which is currently not available anywhere else in the world.

The SLS technology is developed by the Institute for Infocomm Research (I²R), an institute under A*STAR. The I²R team was awarded the National Technology Award 2007 for its research and development work on SLS.

SLS is an MPEG4 audio standard that is capable of compressing music files (such as CD tracks) for playback without any loss in fidelity. It also allows for fine-grain pre-encoding of music files at different bitrates so that they can be subsequently streamed or played back at different quality, depending on the device type or available channel bandwidth.

Soundbuzz' Asia General Manager, Ms Yen Ong, said: "It is critical with any new digital music offering that we give consumers a number of flexible and simple options so they can tailor the experience to their own tastes."

"With A*STAR’s technology, consumers can now purchase incredibly high quality songs that they can enjoy on the most sophisticated home entertainment system, but also transfer easily to their mobile handsets if they want to take their music with them."

  SoundBuzz/SLS