Harald Popp (born 30 September, 1956 in Erlangen)
is a German
electrical engineer
Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
. Together with
Karlheinz Brandenburg
Karlheinz Brandenburg (born 20 June 1954) is a German electrical engineer and mathematician. Together with Ernst Eberlein, Heinz Gerhäuser (former Institutes Director of Fraunhofer IIS), Bernhard Grill, Jürgen Herre and Harald Popp (all Fraunh ...
, Ernst Eberlein, Heinz Gerhäuser (former Institutes Director of Fraunhofer IIS),
Bernhard Grill Bernhard Grill (born January 5, 1961) is one of the developers of the MP3 technology.
Grill was born in Schwabach and studied Electrical Engineering at the Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nuremberg. From 1988 to 1995 he engaged in the d ...
, Jürgen Herre (all Fraunhofer IIS), he developed the widespread
MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...
method for audio data compression.
Biography
Education
1975 Popp graduated with the
Abitur
''Abitur'' (), often shortened colloquially to ''Abi'', is a qualification granted at the end of secondary education in Germany. It is conferred on students who pass their final exams at the end of ISCED 3, usually after twelve or thirteen year ...
(
International Baccalaureate Diploma
The International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) is a two-year Curriculum, educational programme primarily aimed at 16-to-19-year-olds in 140 countries around the world. The programme provides an internationally accepted qualification fo ...
).
Popp was educated at Friedrich-Alexander-University (FAU),
Nuremberg
Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...
, where he studied
electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
from 1975 to 1981 and obtained a
graduate Diploma.
Profession
From 1982 to 1984 Popp worked on a technology transfer project for
cable fault location of the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg.
1985 he became researcher at the
Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS-A) in Erlangen.
From 1985 to 1990 was Popp development engineer for digital circuits on board-level.
1987 he started with the development of multi-DSP based real-time audio coding systems.
Since 1987, he has been responsible for
DSP-based real-time
audio coding systems.
1990 he began with the development of studio audio codecs ("ASPEC 91") for high-quality sound transmission over ISDN telephone lines.
From 1990 to 1994 he worked as Head of Hardware Group in the Information Electronics Department.
From 1995 to 1997 he was Head of the video group in the Audio & Multimedia department and 1998 - 2003 Head of the Studio Department.
Since 2004 until 2018 he was Head of Multimedia Real-Time Systems, with a focus on developing effective real-time implementations of audio and video coding.
From 1986 to 2000 Popp developed together with
Karlheinz Brandenburg
Karlheinz Brandenburg (born 20 June 1954) is a German electrical engineer and mathematician. Together with Ernst Eberlein, Heinz Gerhäuser (former Institutes Director of Fraunhofer IIS), Bernhard Grill, Jürgen Herre and Harald Popp (all Fraunh ...
and
Bernhard Grill Bernhard Grill (born January 5, 1961) is one of the developers of the MP3 technology.
Grill was born in Schwabach and studied Electrical Engineering at the Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nuremberg. From 1988 to 1995 he engaged in the d ...
the
MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...
Audio coding format
An audio coding format (or sometimes audio compression format) is a content representation format for storage or transmission of digital audio (such as in digital television, digital radio and in audio and video files). Examples of audio coding f ...
.
For his contribution to this work he was awarded the
German Future Prize
The German Future Prize award is considered one of the most prestigious conferred for science and innovation
Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offer ...
.
Private Life and Hobbies
In his free time, Harald Popp works with his wife Isolde as the author of the fantasy role-playing game
Midgard
In Germanic cosmology, Midgard (an anglicised form of Old Norse ; Old English , Old Saxon , Old High German , and Gothic ''Midjun-gards''; "middle yard", "middle enclosure") is the name for Earth (equivalent in meaning to the Greek term , "inhab ...
. Together they have two sons.
Bibliography
* Isolde & Harald Popp: ''Der Ruf des Roten Raben'' Franke, Elsa; Auflage: 1., 1993,
* M. Dietz, H. Popp, K. Brandenburg and R. Friedrich: ''Audio Compression for Network Transmission'', Journal of the AES, Vol. 44, No. 1-2, 1996.
* Isolde & Harald Popp: ''Midgard-Abenteuer: Der weiße Wurm'' Pegasus Spiele, 1998,
* K. Brandenburg and H. Popp: ''An introduction to MPEG Layer-3'', Fraunhofer Institut für Integrierte Schaltungen (IIS), EBU Technical Review, 2000
online* Isolde & Harald Popp: ''Midgard-Abenteuer: Die Straße zur Hölle'' part 1, Stelzenberg: Elsa Franke, Verlag für F&SF-Spiele, 2011,
* Isolde & Harald Popp: ''Midgard-Abenteuer: Die Treppe zum Himmel'' part 2, Stelzenberg: Elsa Franke, Verlag für F&SF-Spiele, 2011,
* Isolde & Harald Popp: ''Unter dem Schirm des Jadekaisers'', Pegasus Spiele Gmbh, 2005,
See also
*
German inventors and discoverers
----
__NOTOC__
This is a list of German inventors and discoverers. The following list comprises people from Germany or German-speaking Europe, and also people of predominantly German heritage, in alphabetical order of the surname.
For the li ...
*
How Music Got Free
''How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy'' (Also published as ''How Music Got Free: What Happens When an Entire Generation Commits the Same Crime?'', ''How Music Got Free: The Inventor, ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Popp, Harald
1956 births
Living people
20th-century German inventors
German audio engineers
German electrical engineers
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg alumni
People from Erlangen
Engineers from Bavaria