Audio Compression

For purposes of efficient storage, media files are often stored in a compressed form. Audio compression often results in a small amount of distortion. The compression algorithms, used in codecs (codec stands for compression–decompression), have been developed over many years to minimize the distortion from a perceptual point of view. In general, when the compression rate increases, so does the distortion. But the newer codecs generally offer less distortion for the same compression rate, compared to the older codecs.

Popular audio codecs used in video are:

This table summarizes the telephony codecs and compressed data rates (all sampled at 8 kHz).

Codec Description Data rate (Kbps) Data rate (MB per hour)
Original Linear 16 bit 128 57.6
G.711 ulaw Ulaw 8 bit 64 28.8
G.711 linear Linear 8 bit 64 28.8
G.726 ADPCM 32 14.4
G.729 CS-ACELP 8 3.6
GSM 6.10 CELP 13 6.5
DSP Group Truespeech ADPCM 8.5 3.8
MP3 MDCT Variable Variable
WMA MDCT Variable Variable

HPE IDOL Speech Server does not support compressed streamed audio, but can support compressed audio files (you must set the FFmpegDirectory configuration parameter).


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