XM HD Surround
Encyclopedia
On December 28, 2005, XM Satellite Radio
XM Satellite Radio
XM Satellite Radio is one of two satellite radio services in the United States and Canada, operated by Sirius XM Radio. It provides pay-for-service radio, analogous to cable television. Its service includes 73 different music channels, 39 news, sports, talk and entertainment channels, 21 regional...

 announced that it had teamed up with Neural Audio Corporation
Neural Audio Corporation
Neural Audio Corporation is an audio research company based in Kirkland, WA .-Overview:The Neural Audio Corporation specializes in high-end audio research, and pioneered the broadcast arena helping XM Satellite Radio launch their service using the Neural Codec Pre-Conditioner. This allows for...

 to introduce XM HD Surround, XM HD Surround broadcasts XM channels in 5.1 digital surround sound
Surround sound
Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...

. For a time XM broadcast a variety of special shows and live music performances in this format. According to the press release, Denon
Denon
is a Japanese electronics company that was involved in the early stages of development of digital audio technology, while specializing in the manufacture of high-fidelity professional and consumer audio equipment. For many decades, Denon was a brand name of Nippon-Columbia, including the Nippon...

, Onkyo
Onkyo
is a Japanese consumer electronics manufacturer, specializing in home cinema and audio equipment including receivers and surround sound speakers. The word Onkyo translates as "sound harmony".The company started under the name of Osaka Denki Onkyo K.K in 1946...

, Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc., and Yamaha
Yamaha
Yamaha may refer to:* Yamaha Corporation, a Japanese company with a wide range of products and services** Yamaha Motor Company, a Japanese motorized vehicle-producing company...

 will introduce home audio systems capable of playing XM HD Surround in 2006.

The 5.1 surround sound is encoded in the stereo wave for transmission and is thus compatible with any mono/stereo/matrix-style receiver. If played on a 5.1 audio set equipped with Neural Surround decoder, the watermarks (i.e. spatial cues) in the waveforms are detected and the signal is recovered to its original 5.1 form. The technology is similar to parametric stereo
Parametric Stereo
Parametric Stereo is a feature and an Audio Object Type defined and used in MPEG-4 Part 3 to further enhance efficiency in low bandwidth stereo media. Advanced Audio Coding Low Complexity combined with Spectral band replication and Parametric Stereo was defined as HE-AAC v2...

, in which a mono signal is recovered to stereo. The bitrate
Bitrate
In telecommunications and computing, bit rate is the number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time....

 for XMHD surround broadcasts is ~70 kbit/s using aacPlus from Coding Technologies.

XM HD Surround Channels (as of 12/11/08)

  • XM77 Sirius XM Pops - Classical Popular Music

External links

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