masking pattern universal subband integrated coding and multiplexing (MUSICAM)

Musicam is an audio compression method for digital broadcastingand is used in DigitalAudio Broadcast( DAB). The Musicam process, developed by the Institute of Broadcasting Technology, has been defined as MPEG-1 Audio Layer-II (MP2). It uses the psychoacoustic properties of the human auditory system and thus reduces the data rate of audio signals from 1.422 Mbps to 192 kbps.

The Musicam method uses sub-band coding, where the entire frequency range of the audio signal is divided into 32 sub-bands, with each sub-band having a bandwidth of 750 Hz. The audio signals of the individual sub-bands are digitized by means of A/D converters and individually encoded. Since the human ear perceives the different frequencies of the sub-bands differently, the weighting parameters for the A/D conversion are adapted to the perception. For this reason, the audio signals of some subbands are not taken into account, which leads to a reduction in the data rate.