Investigation of Lossless Audio Compression using IEEE 1857.2 Advanced Audio Coding

Abstract

Audio compression is a method of reducing the space demand and aid transmission of the source file which then can be categorized by lossy and lossless compression. Lossless audio compression was considered to be a luxury previously due to the limited storage space. However, as storage technology progresses, lossless audio files can be seen as the only plausible choice for those seeking the ultimate audio quality experience. There are a lot of commonly used lossless codecs are FLAC, Wavpack, ALAC, Monkey Audio, True Audio, etc. The IEEE Standard for Advanced Audio Coding (IEEE 1857.2) is a new standard approved by IEEE in 2013 that covers both lossy and lossless audio compression tools. A lot of research has been done on this standard, but this paper will focus more on whether the IEEE 1857.2 lossless audio codec to be a viable alternative to other existing codecs in its current state. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to investigate the codec’s operation as initial measurements performed by researchers show that the lossless compression performance of the IEEE compressor is better than any traditional encoders, while the encoding speed is slower which can be further optimized.