ABSTRACT
As mentioned and proven in a number of previous chapters, digital audio creates large amounts of data to be stored; the need for data compression became clear almost from the start of digital audio, but it also became clear that digital audio compression and data compression as used in PCs was a totally different game. Much research and development needed to be performed before some usable designs were available. One of the most noticeable efforts in this domain was performed by the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, together with the University of Erlangen, who started to work around 1987 on a perceptual audio coding in the framework of Digital Audio Broadcast. A powerful algorithm to compress the digital data used for audio purposes was standardized.
