New LC3plus Hi-Res Wireless CODEC

Image Credits: JAS & Fraunhofer Institute

The German Fraunhofer Institute has been a leader in CODEC research and development for decades and have just announced their new LC3 audio CODEC. With LC3, it will become possible to enjoy Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) speech quality in Voice Over LTE (VoLTE) calls and Bluetooth headsets, while its sibling, LC3plus, takes the music streaming experience on wireless accessories to the next level.

Their new LC3/LC3plus CODEC has just received the highly valued Hi-Res Audio Wireless certification issued by the Japanese Audio Society (JAS). This new CODEC was developed as an open standard and is published as ETSI TS 103 634. Its enhanced LC3plus sibling supports a High-Resolution mode, which provides best-in-class Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) and Total Harmonic Distortion plus Noise (THD+N) performance. The CODEC operates normally between 125 and 250 Kbps per channel while allowing seamless bitrate adaptation up to 500 Kbps per channel.

The LC3plus CODEC not only uses significantly less power, it provides a very robust connection alleviating errors that can occur in the wireless environment. Supporting a 96KHz sample rate, 24 bits per sample and the ability to reproduce frequencies above 40KHz, it meets meets the High Resolution standard set by JAS. This makes it the ideal CODEC to bring high-transparency audio streaming to high-resolution wireless accessories such as headsets or loudspeakers. LC3plus is the only open-standard audio codec for high-resolution wireless headsets and high-quality gaming headsets.

See the Fraunhofer Institute press release here.

For more information visit the Fraunhofer Institute and JAS web sites.

For more information on Hi-Res CODECS see this post.