Neural Audio Corporation was an audio research company based in

Kirkland, Washington Kirkland is a city in King County, Washington, United States. A suburb east of Seattle, its population was 92,175 in the 2020 U.S. census which made it the sixth largest city in the county and the twelfth largest in the state. The city's downto ...

. The company specialized in

high-end audio High-end audio is a class of consumer home audio equipment marketed to audiophiles on the basis of high price or quality, and esoteric or novel sound reproduction technologies. The term can refer simply to the price, to the build quality of the ...

research. It helped

XM Satellite Radio XM Satellite Radio (XM) was one of the three satellite radio (SDARS) and online radio services in the United States and Canada, operated by Sirius XM Holdings. It provided pay-for-service radio, analogous to subscription cable television. Its s ...

launch their service using the Neural Codec Pre-Conditioner, which was designed to provide higher quality audio at lower

bitrate In telecommunications and computing, bit rate (bitrate or as a variable ''R'') is the number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time. The bit rate is expressed in the unit bit per second (symbol: bit/s), often in conjunction w ...

History

The company was co-founded by two

audio engineer An audio engineer (also known as a sound engineer or recording engineer) helps to produce a recording or a live performance, balancing and adjusting sound sources using equalization, dynamics processing and audio effects, mixing, reproduction, ...

s, Paul Hubert and Robert Reams in 2000. In 2009 the company was acquired by DTS Inc. for $15 million in cash.

Products

Neural was mostly known for its work in the field of audio processing and its "Neural Surround" sound format.

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

, FOX, NBC, CBS, Sony, Universal,

Warner Bros Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Di ...

, THX, Yamaha,

Pioneer Electronics commonly referred to as Pioneer, is a Japanese multinational corporation based in Tokyo, that specializes in digital entertainment products. The company was founded by Nozomu Matsumoto in January 1, 1938 in Tokyo as a radio and speaker repair s ...

, Ford,

Honda is a Japanese public multinational conglomerate manufacturer of automobiles, motorcycles, and power equipment, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, reaching a product ...

Nissan , trade name, trading as Nissan Motor Corporation and often shortened to Nissan, is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automobile manufacturer headquartered in Nishi-ku, Yokohama, Japan. The company sells ...

, Vivendi and SiriusXM were partners and customers in connection with sound for movies, broadcasting applications, music reproduction and

video games Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...

. "Neural Surround" is a technology similar to

MPEG Surround MPEG Surround (ISO/IEC 23003-1 or MPEG-D Part 1), also known as Spatial Audio Coding (SAC) is a lossy compression format for surround sound that provides a method for extending mono or stereo audio services to multi-channel audio in a backwards ...

, where a 5.1 stream is downmixed into stereo than recovered using cues – encoded into the downmixed stereo. NPR participated in a trial of the "Neural Surround" technology in 2004, using the

Harris Harris may refer to: Places Canada * Harris, Ontario * Northland Pyrite Mine (also known as Harris Mine) * Harris, Saskatchewan * Rural Municipality of Harris No. 316, Saskatchewan Scotland * Harris, Outer Hebrides (sometimes called the Isle o ...

NeuStar 5225.

XM HD Surround {{Update, inaccurate=y, date=January 2012 On December 28, 2005, XM Satellite Radio announced that it had teamed up with Neural Audio Corporation to introduce XM HD Surround, XM HD Surround broadcasts XM channels in 5.1 digital surround sound. Fo ...

was based on the same technology. Neural provides its "Codec Pre-Conditioner" in at least two types of devices, a "NeuStar UltraLink digital radio audio conditioner" built as a physical device and a "Neustar SW4.0" built as a piece of software on

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

. Manual of the software indicates that the pre-conditioner works by analyzing noise in each frequency bin and masking them to not exceed predefined limits, so that they would not overwhelm a codec.

Harris Broadcast GatesAir is an American electronics manufacturer that produces, markets and services terrestrial TV and radio broadcast equipment globally. Products and Services GatesAir manufactures transmitters and associated broadcast gear for over-the-air ...

acted as a redistributor of Neural technology.

References

External links

Celebrity Voice ChangerMixing & Mastering Services
Audio engineering {{US-company-stub