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Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP)
Dr. Rhonda
Wilson, MAES
Friday, 14 July 2000
reported
by: Mr. Rafael Oei
Secretary (Term
2000/2001)
On Friday, 14 July 2000 at
7.30pm, 12 members and 30 guests of the AES Singapore
Section gathered at the Touch Community Theatre. The honour of the
evening was to have the Vice President AES International Region, Dr
Rhonda Wilson present a technical seminar on Meridian Lossless
Packing (MLP). Dr. Rhonda Wilson is the Engineering Research Manager
with Meridian Audio, UK.
| Dr Wilson
began by sharing her thoughts and hopes that DVD audio would eventually
be accepted as a world standard. Going through some of its benefits,
Dr Wilson launched directly into the content for the night.
Describing the structure of the DVD Forum, Dr Wilson introduced
us to the scope of the fourth working group from the forum. This was to
"create DVD-Audio application format, which meets the requirements of
the next-generation high quality audio for the music industry and the
consumer all over the world." |
Dr. Rhonda
Wilson speaking about the Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP) coding
technique at the Touch Community Theatre in Singapore
- photograph by Mr. Michael Teh. |
Using data from the working group
(WG-4), the presentation proceeded with a quick comparative overview of DVD
players and available formats given the specifications of each DVD read-only
discs. Outlining the logical structure of the audio disc, Dr Wilson
then went through the potential available in designing and managing content
on the existing structure. These include navigating through data and bonus
content for conditional access.
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12 members and
30 guests at the Touch Community Theatre -
photograph by Michael Teh. |
Dr Wilson
also walked us through data on fs/Qb combinations for multi-channel
contents with efficient bit-budget. This section included channel
assignments of scalable Audio data in Audio Object as compared to Audio
data in Video Object that did not support scalability. An interesting
study of possible configurations for including still pictures, text
information and video content within a two channel presentation for
Audio data in Audio Object followed. |
Taking all the scenarios
available, Dr Wilson then explained how the Meridian Lossless Packing
(MLP) assisted in data reduction. This includes recapturing unused bits,
removing inter-channel redundancy, eliminating waveform as well as numerical
redundancies and controlling the peak data rate. After elaborating on how
the above are achieved and describing the architecture of the process, Dr
Wilson then presented the benefits in compression savings given various
bit-rates, a comparison of DVD Audio playing time with MLP and benefits to
the Content Provider using MLP. These benefits include flexible coding,
two-channel options for better control, the ability to carry auxiliary data
and provenance information for decoders.
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AES Singapore
Section Chairman, Mr. Robert Soo (left) presenting a plaque to Dr.
Rhonda Wilson (right) after her presentation
- photograph by Mr. Michael Teh. |
In conclusion,
we were presented with possible MLP applications for the CD, DVD, the
studio, electronic cinema and production work and various configurations
possible on a DVD-A six-channel player given various options and
interfaces. A sturdy solution for DVD-audio, the best news from MLP for
DVD consumers, according to Dr Wilson, is that there will be no
need for region codes. Definitely an interesting look into a possible
future for the DVD-audio movement. |
The speaker, Dr.
Rhonda Wilson (the lady in red), who is also the Vice President of the AES
International Region, with the audience after her talk on MLP coding at the
Touch Community Theatre - photograph by Mr.
Michael Teh. |
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Speaker Bio
Dr. Rhonda Wilson
Vice President, AES International
Region
Engineering Research Manager,
Meridian Audio (UK)
Rhonda Wilson was born
in Sydney, Australia. She studied at the University of Sydney, receiving the
B.Sc. degree in Pure Mathematics and Computer Science in 1985 and the B.E.
(Electrical) with First Class Honours in 1987.
After graduating, Rhonda
worked on the development of an FDDI network at AWA, and was a research
affiliate at the University of Sydney. During 1989 she joined KEF as a
research engineer on the Archimedes project. Late 1990 she commenced work
for Meridian Audio where
she continues to research and develop audio products, with a particular
emphasis on DSP for loudspeakers, surround sound decoders, and recently the
lossless compression algorithm for DVDA (MLP).
With Meridian's support she also
gained a PhD (1997) from Imperial College on Noise Source Cancellation in
Audio Recordings. September 1992 she chaired the AES UK section's DSP
conference and has chaired a number of papers sessions at AES Conventions,
and UK Conferences. She has given several papers at AES conventions and had
papers published in the Journal. She served on the UK committee during
1991-94, as Vice-Chairman 92/93 and Chairman 93/94. Rhonda served as
a governor on the AES Board of Governors 1993-95, and is currently the Vice
President for the International Region. Rhonda has been on the AES
review board since 1993.
When not working on the accurate
reproduction of recorded music Rhonda enjoys live music. She earned
the A.Mus.A performance diploma on the bassoon in 1982 and has since played
with the Australian Youth Orchestra, and the Ernest Read Symphony Orchestra.
Currently she enjoys playing with the Oakhill Orchestra and with the music
group at St Andrew the Great, Cambridge. |
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