Apple container
118-513: ADTS stream Advanced Audio Coding ( AAC ) is an audio coding standard for lossy digital audio compression . It was designed to be the successor of the MP3 format and generally achieves higher sound quality than MP3 at the same bit rate . AAC has been standardized by ISO and IEC as part of the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 specifications. Part of AAC, HE-AAC ("AAC+"), is part of MPEG-4 Audio and
236-647: A BASIC interpreter for the device. Gates called MITS and claimed that he had a working interpreter, and MITS requested a demonstration. Allen worked on a simulator for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter, and it worked flawlessly when they demonstrated it to MITS in March 1975 in Albuquerque, New Mexico . MITS agreed to distribute it, marketing it as Altair BASIC . Gates and Allen established Microsoft on April 4, 1975, with Gates as CEO, and Allen suggested
354-474: A video coding format ) inside a multimedia container format . An audio coding format does not dictate all algorithms used by a codec implementing the format. An important part of how lossy audio compression works is by removing data in ways humans can't hear, according to a psychoacoustic model ; the implementer of an encoder has some freedom of choice in which data to remove (according to their psychoacoustic model). A lossless audio coding format reduces
472-491: A 4-band PQMF filterbank, with four shorter filterbanks following, in order to allow for scalable sampling rates. In 1999, MPEG-2 Part 7 was updated and included in the MPEG-4 family of standards and became known as MPEG-4 Part 3 , MPEG-4 Audio or ISO/IEC 14496-3:1999 . This update included several improvements. One of these improvements was the addition of Audio Object Types which are used to allow interoperability with
590-528: A Microsoft operating system or a non-Microsoft operating system. In effect, the royalty payment to Microsoft when no Microsoft product is being used acts as a penalty, or tax, on the OEM's use of a competing PC operating system. Since 1988, Microsoft's use of per processor licenses has increased." Following Bill Gates's internal "Internet Tidal Wave memo" on May 26, 1995, Microsoft began to redefine its offerings and expand its product line into computer networking and
708-448: A call must verify on their respective ends. On October 7, Microsoft acquired Ally.io, a software service that measures companies' progress against OKRs . Microsoft plans to incorporate Ally.io into its Viva family of employee experience products. On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced the acquisition of American video game developer and holding company Activision Blizzard in an all-cash deal worth $ 68.7 billion. Activision Blizzard
826-523: A chain of Microsoft-branded retail stores, and on October 22, 2009, the first retail Microsoft Store opened in Scottsdale, Arizona ; the same day Windows 7 was officially released to the public. Windows 7's focus was on refining Vista with ease-of-use features and performance enhancements, rather than an extensive reworking of Windows. As the smartphone industry boomed in the late 2000s, Microsoft had struggled to keep up with its rivals in providing
944-443: A closed-source digital rights management (DRM)-restricted form of 128 kbit/s AAC (see FairPlay ) via the iTunes Store or create files without DRM from their own CDs using iTunes. In later years, Apple began offering music videos and movies, which also use AAC for audio encoding. On May 29, 2007, Apple began selling songs and music videos from participating record labels at higher bitrate (256 kbit/s cVBR) and free of DRM,
1062-722: A combination of AI, high-performance computing and quantum computing . The service includes Copilot, a GPT-4 based large language model tool to query and visualize data, write code, initiate simulations, and educate researchers. At a November 2023 developer conference, Microsoft announced two new custom-designed computing chips: The Maia chip, designed to run large language models, and Cobalt CPU, designed to power general cloud services on Azure. On November 20, 2023, Satya Nadella announced that Sam Altman , who had been ousted as CEO of OpenAI just days earlier, and Greg Brockman , who had resigned as president, would join Microsoft to lead
1180-525: A completely new user interface with a novel start button , and 32-bit compatibility; similar to NT, it provided the Win32 API. Windows 95 came bundled with the online service MSN , which was at first intended to be a competitor to the Internet, and (for OEMs) Internet Explorer , a Web browser . Internet Explorer has not bundled with the retail Windows 95 boxes, because the boxes were printed before
1298-409: A complex toolbox to perform a wide range of operations from low bit rate speech coding to high-quality audio coding and music synthesis. AAC encoders can switch dynamically between a single MDCT block of length 1024 points or 8 blocks of 128 points (or between 960 points and 120 points, respectively). AAC takes a modular approach to encoding. Depending on the complexity of the bitstream to be encoded,
SECTION 10
#17327982716661416-456: A day after hosting a Sting concert for 50 people, including Microsoft executives, in Davos , Switzerland. On January 23, 2023, Microsoft announced a new multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment deal with ChatGPT developer OpenAI . In June 2023, Microsoft released Azure Quantum Elements to run molecular simulations and calculations in computational chemistry and materials science using
1534-551: A deluxe version for $ 399.99. Increasingly present in the hardware business following Xbox, Microsoft 2006 released the Zune series of digital media players, a successor of its previous software platform Portable Media Center . These expanded on previous hardware commitments from Microsoft following its original Microsoft Mouse in 1983; as of 2007 the company sold the best-selling wired keyboard ( Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 ), mouse ( IntelliMouse ), and desktop webcam ( LifeCam ) in
1652-562: A diverse range of other audio formats such as TwinVQ , CELP , HVXC , speech synthesis and MPEG-4 Structured Audio . Another notable addition in this version of the AAC standard is Perceptual Noise Substitution (PNS). In that regard, the AAC profiles (AAC-LC, AAC Main and AAC-SSR profiles) are combined with perceptual noise substitution and are defined in the MPEG-4 audio standard as Audio Object Types. MPEG-4 Audio Object Types are combined in four MPEG-4 Audio profiles: Main (which includes most of
1770-718: A file for the MPEG-2 standard using Audio Data Interchange Format (ADIF), consisting of a single header followed by the raw AAC audio data blocks. However, if the data is to be streamed within an MPEG-2 transport stream, a self-synchronizing format called an Audio Data Transport Stream ( ADTS ) is used, consisting of a series of frames, each frame having a header followed by the AAC audio data. This file and streaming-based format are defined in MPEG-2 Part 7 , but are only considered informative by MPEG-4, so an MPEG-4 decoder does not need to support either format. These containers, as well as
1888-426: A format dubbed "iTunes Plus" . These files mostly adhere to the AAC standard and are playable on many non-Apple products but they do include custom iTunes information such as album artwork and a purchase receipt, so as to identify the customer in case the file is leaked out onto peer-to-peer networks. It is possible, however, to remove these custom tags to restore interoperability with players that conform strictly to
2006-469: A graphical extension for MS-DOS , despite having begun jointly developing OS/2 with IBM that August. Microsoft moved its headquarters from Bellevue to Redmond, Washington , on February 26, 1986, and went public on March 13, with the resulting rise in stock making an estimated four billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees. Microsoft released its version of OS/2 to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on April 2, 1987. In 1990,
2124-471: A joint venture with NBC since 1996. On October 1, Microsoft announced its intention to launch a news operation, part of a new-look MSN , with Windows 8 later in the month. On October 26, 2012, Microsoft launched Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface . Three days later, Windows Phone 8 was launched. To cope with the potential for an increase in demand for products and services, Microsoft opened
2242-530: A major target of the controversy, will leave the company after the acquisition is finalized. The deal was closed on October 13, 2023. In December 2022, Microsoft announced a new 10-year deal with the London Stock Exchange Group for products including Microsoft Azure; Microsoft acquired around 4% of LSEG as part of the deal. In January 2023, CEO Satya Nadella announced Microsoft would lay off some 10,000 employees. The announcement came
2360-419: A method that radically shrank the amount of information needed to store the digitized form of a song or speech. AAC was developed with the cooperation and contributions of companies including Bell Labs , Fraunhofer IIS , Dolby Laboratories , LG Electronics , NEC , Panasonic , Sony Corporation , ETRI , JVC Kenwood , Philips , Microsoft , and NTT . It was officially declared an international standard by
2478-622: A mode for the Windows operating system rather than a separate and unique operating system. In March the company also established guidelines that censor users of Office 365 from using profanity in private documents. In April 2018, Microsoft released the source code for Windows File Manager under the MIT License to celebrate the program's 20th anniversary. In April the company further expressed willingness to embrace open source initiatives by announcing Azure Sphere as its own derivative of
SECTION 20
#17327982716662596-567: A modern smartphone operating system, falling behind Apple and Google -sponsored Android in the United States. As a result, in 2010 Microsoft revamped their aging flagship mobile operating system, Windows Mobile , replacing it with the new Windows Phone OS that was released in October that year. It used a new user interface design language, codenamed "Metro", which prominently used simple shapes, typography, and iconography, utilizing
2714-668: A more attractive format to distribute audio than its predecessor MP3, particularly for streaming audio (such as Internet radio) depending on the use case. However, a patent license is required for all manufacturers or developers of AAC "end-user" codecs . The terms (as disclosed to SEC) uses per-unit pricing. In the case of software, each computer running the software is to be considered a separate "unit". It used to be common for free and open source software implementations such as FFmpeg and FAAC to only distribute in source code form so as to not "otherwise supply" an AAC codec. However, FFmpeg has since become more lenient on patent matters:
2832-587: A motion-sensing input device made by Microsoft and designed as a video game controller , first introduced in November 2010, was upgraded for the 2013 release of the Xbox One video game console. Kinect's capabilities were revealed in May 2013: an ultra-wide 1080p camera, function in the dark due to an infrared sensor, higher-end processing power and new software, the ability to distinguish between fine movements (such as
2950-605: A new 24/7 cable news channel, MSNBC . Microsoft created Windows CE 1.0 , a new OS designed for devices with low memory and other constraints, such as personal digital assistants . In October 1997, the Justice Department filed a motion in the Federal District Court , stating that Microsoft violated an agreement signed in 1994 and asked the court to stop the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. On January 13, 2000, Bill Gates handed over
3068-418: A new advanced AI research team. However, the plan was short-lived, as Altman was subsequently reinstated as OpenAI's CEO and Brockman rejoined the company amid pressure from OpenAI's employees and investors on its board. In March 2024, Inflection AI 's cofounders Mustafa Suleyman and Karen Simonyan announced their departure from the company in order to start Microsoft AI, with Microsoft acqui-hiring nearly
3186-646: A number of "holiday stores" across the U.S. to complement the increasing number of "bricks-and-mortar" Microsoft Stores that opened in 2012. On March 29, 2013, Microsoft launched a Patent Tracker. In August 2012, the New York City Police Department announced a partnership with Microsoft for the development of the Domain Awareness System which is used for Police surveillance in New York City . The Kinect ,
3304-410: A portion if it were to go through. On August 5, 2020, Microsoft stopped its xCloud game streaming test for iOS devices. According to Microsoft, the future of xCloud on iOS remains unclear and potentially out of Microsoft's hands. Apple has imposed a strict limit on " remote desktop clients " which means applications are only allowed to connect to a user-owned host device or gaming console owned by
3422-601: A publishing division named Microsoft Press . Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in 1983 after developing Hodgkin's lymphoma . Allen claimed in Idea Man: A Memoir by the co-founder of Microsoft that Gates wanted to dilute his share in the company when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease because he did not think that he was working hard enough. Allen later invested in low-tech sectors, sports teams, commercial real estate, neuroscience, private space flight, and more. Microsoft released Windows 1.0 on November 20, 1985, as
3540-452: A raw AAC stream, may bear the .aac file extension. MPEG-4 Part 3 also defines its own self-synchronizing format called a Low Overhead Audio Stream (LOAS) that encapsulates not only AAC, but any MPEG-4 audio compression scheme such as TwinVQ and ALS . This format is what was defined for use in DVB transport streams when encoders use either SBR or parametric stereo AAC extensions. However, it
3658-452: A record profit in 2007. The European Union imposed another fine of €899 million ($ 1.4 billion) for Microsoft's lack of compliance with the March 2004 judgment on February 27, 2008, saying that the company charged rivals unreasonable prices for key information about its workgroup and backoffice servers. Microsoft stated that it was in compliance and that "these fines are about the past issues that have been resolved". 2007 also saw
Advanced Audio Coding - Misplaced Pages Continue
3776-451: A result, to more efficient compression. This is especially true at very low bit rates where the superior stereo coding, pure MDCT, and better transform window sizes leave MP3 unable to compete. While the MP3 format has near-universal hardware and software support, primarily because MP3 was the format of choice during the crucial first few years of widespread music file-sharing /distribution over
3894-443: A rudimentary computer to track and analyze automobile traffic data. Gates enrolled at Harvard University while Allen pursued a degree in computer science at Washington State University , though he later dropped out to work at Honeywell . The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems 's (MITS) Altair 8800 microcomputer, which inspired Allen to suggest that they could program
4012-453: A thumb movement), and determining a user's heart rate by looking at their face. Microsoft filed a patent application in 2011 that suggests that the corporation may use the Kinect camera system to monitor the behavior of television viewers as part of a plan to make the viewing experience more interactive. On July 19, 2013, Microsoft stocks suffered their biggest one-day percentage sell-off since
4130-645: A very efficient approach. The AAC payload can be subdivided into parts with different error sensitivities. Error Resilience (ER) techniques can be used to make the coding scheme itself more robust against errors. For AAC, three custom-tailored methods were developed and defined in MPEG-4 Audio The audio coding standards MPEG-4 Low Delay ( AAC-LD ), Enhanced Low Delay (AAC-ELD), and Enhanced Low Delay v2 (AAC-ELDv2) as defined in ISO/IEC 14496-3:2009 and ISO/IEC 14496-3:2009/Amd 3 are designed to combine
4248-458: Is LAME , which is one of several different codecs which implements encoding and decoding audio in the MP3 audio coding format in software. Some audio coding formats are documented by a detailed technical specification document known as an audio coding specification . Some such specifications are written and approved by standardization organizations as technical standards , and are thus known as an audio coding standard . The term "standard"
4366-406: Is MP3 files, which are raw audio coding without a container format. De facto standards for adding metadata tags such as title and artist to MP3s, such as ID3 , are hacks which work by appending the tags to the MP3, and then relying on the MP3 player to recognize the chunk as malformed audio coding and therefore skip it. In video files with audio, the encoded audio content is bundled with video (in
4484-505: Is US$ 500,000 per year. Some analysts deemed this unthinkable ten years prior, however, as in 2001 then-CEO Steve Ballmer called Linux "cancer". Microsoft planned to launch a preview of Intune for Education "in the coming weeks", with general availability scheduled for spring 2017, priced at $ 30 per device, or through volume licensing agreements. In January 2018, Microsoft patched Windows 10 to account for CPU problems related to Intel's Meltdown security breach . The patch led to issues with
4602-443: Is a content representation format for storage or transmission of digital audio (such as in digital television , digital radio and in audio and video files). Examples of audio coding formats include MP3 , AAC , Vorbis , FLAC , and Opus . A specific software or hardware implementation capable of audio compression and decompression to/from a specific audio coding format is called an audio codec ; an example of an audio codec
4720-612: Is adopted into digital radio standards DAB+ and Digital Radio Mondiale , and mobile television standards DVB-H and ATSC-M/H . AAC supports inclusion of 48 full- bandwidth (up to 96 kHz) audio channels in one stream plus 16 low frequency effects ( LFE , limited to 120 Hz) channels, up to 16 "coupling" or dialog channels, and up to 16 data streams. The quality for stereo is satisfactory to modest requirements at 96 kbit/s in joint stereo mode; however, hi-fi transparency demands data rates of at least 128 kbit/s ( VBR ). Tests of MPEG-4 audio have shown that AAC meets
4838-470: Is also known as MPEG-2 NBC (Non-Backward Compatible), because it is not compatible with the MPEG-1 audio formats ( MP1 , MP2 and MP3 ). MPEG-2 Part 7 defined three profiles: Low-Complexity profile (AAC-LC / LC-AAC), Main profile (AAC Main) and Scalable Sampling Rate profile (AAC-SSR). AAC-LC profile consists of a base format very much like AT&T's Perceptual Audio Coding (PAC) coding format, with
Advanced Audio Coding - Misplaced Pages Continue
4956-484: Is also sometimes used for de facto standards as well as formal standards. Audio content encoded in a particular audio coding format is normally encapsulated within a container format . As such, the user normally doesn't have a raw AAC file, but instead has a .m4a audio file , which is a MPEG-4 Part 14 container containing AAC-encoded audio. The container also contains metadata such as title and other tags, and perhaps an index for fast seeking. A notable exception
5074-491: Is an American multinational technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington . Founded in 1975, the company became highly influential in the rise of personal computers through software like Windows , and the company has since expanded to Internet services, cloud computing , video gaming and other fields. Microsoft is the largest software maker , one of the most valuable public U.S. companies, and one of
5192-478: Is an Object Type called Long Term Prediction (LTP), which is an improvement of the Main profile using a forward predictor with lower computational complexity. Applying error protection enables error correction up to a certain extent. Error correcting codes are usually applied equally to the whole payload. However, since different parts of an AAC payload show different sensitivity to transmission errors, this would not be
5310-595: Is best known for producing franchises, including but not limited to Warcraft , Diablo , Call of Duty , StarCraft , Candy Crush Saga , Crash Bandicoot , Spyro , Tony Hawk's , Guitar Hero , and Overwatch . Activision and Microsoft each released statements saying the acquisition was to benefit their businesses in the metaverse , many saw Microsoft's acquisition of video game studios as an attempt to compete against Meta Platforms , with TheStreet referring to Microsoft wanting to become "the Disney of
5428-549: Is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Alphabet , Amazon , Apple , and Meta . However it has been criticized for its monopolistic practices and the company's software has been criticized for problems with ease of use , robustness , and security . Childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen sought to make a business using their skills in computer programming . In 1972, they founded Traf-O-Data , which sold
5546-537: Is designed to be the successor of the MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 , known as MP3 format, which was specified by ISO / IEC in 11172-3 ( MPEG-1 Audio) and 13818-3 ( MPEG-2 Audio). Improvements include: Overall, the AAC format allows developers more flexibility to design codecs than MP3 does, and corrects many of the design choices made in the original MPEG-1 audio specification. This increased flexibility often leads to more concurrent encoding strategies and, as
5664-511: Is fully part of the MP4 standard) only for radio streams, not file playback, and iTunes still lacks support for true VBR encoding. For a number of years, many mobile phones from manufacturers such as Nokia , Motorola , Samsung , Sony Ericsson , BenQ-Siemens and Philips have supported AAC playback. The first such phone was the Nokia 5510 released in 2002 which also plays MP3s. However, this phone
5782-521: Is not used in some of the MPEG-4 Audio profiles. The MPEG-2 Part 7 AAC LC profile, AAC Main profile and AAC SSR profile are combined with Perceptual Noise Substitution and defined in the MPEG-4 Audio standard as Audio Object Types (under the name AAC LC, AAC Main and AAC SSR). These are combined with other Object Types in MPEG-4 Audio profiles. Here is a list of some audio profiles defined in the MPEG-4 standard: One of many improvements in MPEG-4 Audio
5900-481: Is restricted to only a single non-multiplexed AAC stream. This format is also referred to as a Low Overhead Audio Transport Multiplex (LATM), which is just an interleaved multiple stream version of a LOAS. In December 2003, Japan started broadcasting terrestrial DTV ISDB-T standard that implements MPEG-2 video and MPEG-2 AAC audio. In April 2006 Japan started broadcasting the ISDB-T mobile sub-program, called 1seg, that
6018-590: Is supported on a wide range of devices and software such as PlayStation Vita , Wii , digital audio players like Sony Walkman or SanDisk Clip , Android and BlackBerry devices, various in-dash car audio systems, and is also one of the audio formats used on the Spotify web player. The discrete cosine transform (DCT), a type of transform coding for lossy compression , was proposed by Nasir Ahmed in 1972, and developed by Ahmed with T. Natarajan and K. R. Rao in 1973, publishing their results in 1974. This led to
SECTION 50
#17327982716666136-460: The Department of Justice's Antitrust Division filed a competitive impact statement that said: "Beginning in 1988 and continuing until July 15, 1994, Microsoft induced many OEMs to execute anti-competitive 'per processor licenses. Under a per-processor license, an OEM pays Microsoft a royalty for each computer it sells containing a particular microprocessor, whether the OEM sells the computer with
6254-1022: The IBM PC–compatible operating system market and the office software suite market since the 1990s. Its best-known software products are the Windows line of operating systems , the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity applications, the Azure cloud computing platform, and the Edge web browser. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of touchscreen personal computers. Other consumer and enterprise software it produces include Internet search with Bing ; digital services through MSN ; mixed reality through HoloLens ; cloud computing with Azure ; and software development through Visual Studio . Today, Microsoft
6372-599: The Linux operating system. In May 2018, Microsoft partnered with 17 American intelligence agencies to develop cloud computing products. The project is dubbed "Azure Government" and has ties to the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) surveillance program. On June 4, 2018, Microsoft officially announced the acquisition of GitHub for $ 7.5 billion, a deal that closed on October 26, 2018. On July 10, 2018, Microsoft revealed
6490-470: The Microsoft Azure virtual machines reliant on Intel's CPU architecture. On January 12, Microsoft released PowerShell Core 6.0 for the macOS and Linux operating systems. In February 2018, Microsoft killed notification support for their Windows Phone devices which effectively ended firmware updates for the discontinued devices. In March 2018, Microsoft recalled Windows 10 S to change it to
6608-622: The Moving Picture Experts Group in April 1997. It is specified both as Part 7 of the MPEG-2 standard , and Subpart 4 in Part 3 of the MPEG-4 standard . In 1997, AAC was first introduced as MPEG-2 Part 7 , formally known as ISO / IEC 13818-7:1997 . This part of MPEG-2 was a new part, since MPEG-2 already included MPEG-2 Part 3 , formally known as ISO/IEC 13818-3: MPEG-2 BC (Backwards Compatible). Therefore, MPEG-2 Part 7
6726-580: The Open Networking Foundation started on March 23, 2011. Fellow founders were Google , HPE Networking , Yahoo! , Verizon Communications , Deutsche Telekom and 17 other companies. This nonprofit organization is focused on providing support for a cloud computing initiative called Software-Defined Networking. The initiative is meant to speed innovation through simple software changes in telecommunications networks, wireless networks, data centers, and other networking areas. Following
6844-515: The Surface Go platform to the public. Later in the month, it converted Microsoft Teams to gratis . In August 2018, Microsoft released two projects called Microsoft AccountGuard and Defending Democracy. It also unveiled Snapdragon 850 compatibility for Windows 10 on the ARM architecture . In August 2018, Toyota Tsusho began a partnership with Microsoft to create fish farming tools using
6962-604: The World Wide Web . With a few exceptions of new companies, like Netscape , Microsoft was the only major and established company that acted fast enough to be a part of the World Wide Web practically from the start. Other companies like Borland , WordPerfect , Novell , IBM and Lotus , being much slower to adapt to the new situation, would give Microsoft market dominance. The company released Windows 95 on August 24, 1995, featuring pre-emptive multitasking ,
7080-495: The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S video game consoles. In February 2021, Microsoft released Azure Quantum for public preview. The public cloud computing platform provides access to quantum software and quantum hardware including trapped ion , neutral atom , and superconducting systems. In April 2021, Microsoft announced it would buy Nuance Communications for approximately $ 16 billion. The acquisition of Nuance
7198-415: The modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) used by modern audio compression formats such as MP3 and AAC. MDCT was proposed by J. P. Princen, A. W. Johnson and A. B. Bradley in 1987, following earlier work by Princen and Bradley in 1986. The MDCT is used by modern audio compression formats such as Dolby Digital , MP3 , and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC). Microsoft Microsoft Corporation
SECTION 60
#17327982716667316-520: The most valuable brands globally. Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800 . It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO) and subsequent rise in its share price created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since
7434-901: The "gyan.dev" builds recommended by the official site now contain its AAC codec, with the FFmpeg legal page stating that patent law conformance is the user's responsibility. (See below under Products that support AAC, Software.) The Fedora Project , a community backed by Red Hat , has imported the "Third-Party Modified Version of the Fraunhofer FDK AAC Codec Library for Android" to its repositories on September 25, 2018, and has enabled FFmpeg's native AAC encoder and decoder for its ffmpeg-free package on January 31, 2023. The AAC patent holders include Bell Labs , Dolby , ETRI , Fraunhofer , JVC Kenwood , LG Electronics , Microsoft , NEC , NTT (and its subsidiary NTT Docomo ), Panasonic , Philips , and Sony Corporation . Based on
7552-556: The 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market. Steve Ballmer replaced Gates as CEO in 2000 which would see the then-largest of Microsoft's corporate acquisitions in Skype Technologies in 2011, and an increased focus on hardware that led to its first in-house PC line, the Surface, in 2012, and the formation of Microsoft Mobile through Nokia . Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014,
7670-616: The AAC specification. As of January 6, 2009, nearly all music on the USA regioned iTunes Store became DRM-free, with the remainder becoming DRM-free by the end of March 2009. iTunes offers a "Variable Bit Rate" encoding option which encodes AAC tracks in the Constrained Variable Bitrate scheme (a less strict variant of ABR encoding); the underlying QuickTime API does offer a true VBR encoding profile however. As of September 2009, Apple has added support for HE-AAC (which
7788-574: The CEO position to Steve Ballmer , an old college friend of Gates and employee of the company since 1980, while creating a new position for himself as Chief Software Architect . Various companies including Microsoft formed the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance in October 1999 to (among other things) increase security and protect intellectual property through identifying changes in hardware and software. Critics decried
7906-662: The Federal Trade Commission examined Microsoft for possible collusion due to the partnership with IBM, marking the beginning of more than a decade of legal clashes with the government. Meanwhile, the company was at work on Microsoft Windows NT , which was heavily based on their copy of the OS/2 code. It shipped on July 21, 1993, with a new modular kernel and the 32-bit Win32 application programming interface (API), making it easier to port from 16-bit (MS-DOS-based) Windows. Microsoft informed IBM of Windows NT, and
8024-618: The MPEG-4 Audio Object Types), Scalable (AAC LC, AAC LTP, CELP, HVXC, TwinVQ, Wavetable Synthesis, TTSI), Speech (CELP, HVXC, TTSI) and Low Rate Synthesis (Wavetable Synthesis, TTSI). The reference software for MPEG-4 Part 3 is specified in MPEG-4 Part 5 and the conformance bit-streams are specified in MPEG-4 Part 4. MPEG-4 Audio remains backward-compatible with MPEG-2 Part 7. The MPEG-4 Audio Version 2 (ISO/IEC 14496-3:1999/Amd 1:2000) defined new audio object types:
8142-484: The Microsoft Azure application suite for Internet of things (IoT) technologies related to water management. Developed in part by researchers from Kindai University , the water pump mechanisms use artificial intelligence to count the number of fish on a conveyor belt , analyze the number of fish, and deduce the effectiveness of water flow from the data the fish provide. The specific computer programs used in
8260-554: The OS/2 partnership deteriorated. In 1990, Microsoft introduced the Microsoft Office suite which bundled separate applications such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel . On May 22, Microsoft launched Windows 3.0 , featuring streamlined user interface graphics and improved protected mode capability for the Intel 386 processor, and both Office and Windows became dominant in their respective areas. On July 27, 1994,
8378-543: The U.S. smartphone market in January 2016 was 2.7%. During the summer of 2015 the company lost $ 7.6 billion related to its mobile-phone business, firing 7,800 employees. In 2015, the construction of a data center in Mecklenburg County , Virginia led to the destruction of a historic African American cemetery despite archeological recommendations for preservation. On March 1, 2016, Microsoft announced
8496-462: The United States. That year the company also launched the Surface "digital table", later renamed PixelSense . Released in January 2007, the next version of Windows, Vista , focused on features, security and a redesigned user interface dubbed Aero . Microsoft Office 2007 , released at the same time, featured a " Ribbon " user interface which was a significant departure from its predecessors. Relatively strong sales of both products helped to produce
8614-499: The ability to detect, decide and engage before the enemy." In November 2018, Microsoft introduced Azure Multi-Factor Authentication for Microsoft Azure. In December 2018, Microsoft announced Project Mu , an open source release of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) core used in Microsoft Surface and Hyper-V products. The project promotes the idea of Firmware as a Service . In
8732-460: The addition of temporal noise shaping (TNS), the Kaiser window (described below), a nonuniform quantizer , and a reworking of the bitstream format to handle up to 16 stereo channels, 16 mono channels, 16 low-frequency effect (LFE) channels and 16 commentary channels in one bitstream. The Main profile adds a set of recursive predictors that are calculated on each tap of the filterbank. The SSR uses
8850-585: The advantages of perceptual audio coding with the low delay necessary for two-way communication. They are closely derived from the MPEG-2 Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format. AAC-ELD is recommended by GSMA as super-wideband voice codec in the IMS Profile for High Definition Video Conference (HDVC) Service. No licenses or payments are required for a user to stream or distribute audio in AAC format. This reason alone might have made AAC
8968-400: The alliance as a way to enforce indiscriminate restrictions over how consumers use software, and over how computers behave, and as a form of digital rights management : for example, the scenario where a computer is not only secured for its owner but also secured against its owner as well. On April 3, 2000, a judgment was handed down in the case of United States v. Microsoft Corp. , calling
9086-488: The company , citing it abused its dominance with the Windows OS, resulting in a judgment of €497 million ($ 613 million) and requiring Microsoft to produce new versions of Windows XP without Windows Media Player : Windows XP Home Edition N and Windows XP Professional N. In November 2005, the company's second video game console, the Xbox 360 , was released. There were two versions, a basic version for $ 299.99 and
9204-541: The company an "abusive monopoly." Microsoft later settled with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2004. On October 25, 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP , unifying the mainstream and NT lines of OS under the NT codebase. The company released the Xbox later that year, entering the video game console market dominated by Sony and Nintendo . In March 2004 the European Union brought antitrust legal action against
9322-606: The company announced it was laying off 1,850 workers, and taking an impairment and restructuring charge of $ 950 million. In June 2016, Microsoft announced a project named Microsoft Azure Information Protection. It aims to help enterprises protect their data as it moves between servers and devices. In November 2016, Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation as a Platinum member during Microsoft's Connect(); developer event in New York. The cost of each Platinum membership
9440-617: The company has changed focus towards cloud computing , as well as its large acquisition of LinkedIn for $ 26.2 billion in 2016. Under Nadella's direction, the company has also expanded its video gaming business to support the Xbox brand, establishing the Microsoft Gaming division in 2022, which is currently the third-largest gaming company in the world by revenue, following the 2023 acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $ 68.7 billion. Microsoft has been market-dominant in
9558-633: The company's war profiteering from a $ 480 million contract to develop virtual reality headsets for the United States Army . On March 26, 2020, Microsoft announced it was acquiring Affirmed Networks for about $ 1.35 billion. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic , Microsoft closed all of its retail stores indefinitely due to health concerns. On July 22, 2020, Microsoft announced plans to close its Mixer service, planning to move existing partners to Facebook Gaming . On July 31, 2020, it
9676-468: The concept of minimalism. Microsoft implemented a new strategy for the software industry, providing a consistent user experience across all smartphones using the Windows Phone OS. It launched an alliance with Nokia in 2011 and Microsoft worked closely with the company to co-develop Windows Phone, but remained partners with long-time Windows Mobile OEM HTC . Microsoft is a founding member of
9794-471: The corresponding filters to enable AAC playback in any DirectShow based player. Mac OS X supports AAC via the QuickTime libraries. Adobe Flash Player , since version 9 update 3, can also play back AAC streams. Since Flash Player is also a browser plugin, it can play AAC files through a browser as well. Audio coding standard An audio coding format (or sometimes audio compression format )
9912-433: The cost of larger files. Uncompressed audio formats, such as pulse-code modulation (PCM, or .wav), are also sometimes used. PCM was the standard format for Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA). In 1950, Bell Labs filed the patent on differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM). Adaptive DPCM (ADPCM) was introduced by P. Cummiskey, Nikil S. Jayant and James L. Flanagan at Bell Labs in 1973. Perceptual coding
10030-579: The creation of a multi-core unit at Microsoft, following the steps of server companies such as Sun and IBM. Gates retired from his role as Chief Software Architect on June 27, 2008, a decision announced in June 2006, while retaining other positions related to the company in addition to being an advisor for the company on key projects. Azure Services Platform , the company's entry into the cloud computing market for Windows, launched on October 27, 2008. On February 12, 2009, Microsoft announced its intent to open
10148-444: The desired performance and the acceptable output, implementers may create profiles to define which of a specific set of tools they want to use for a particular application. The MPEG-2 Part 7 standard (Advanced Audio Coding) was first published in 1997 and offers three default profiles: The MPEG-4 Part 3 standard (MPEG-4 Audio) defined various new compression tools (a.k.a. Audio Object Types ) and their usage in brand new profiles. AAC
10266-453: The development of the modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT), proposed by J. P. Princen, A. W. Johnson and A. B. Bradley in 1987, following earlier work by Princen and Bradley in 1986. The MP3 audio coding standard introduced in 1992 used a hybrid coding algorithm that is part MDCT and part FFT . AAC uses a purely MDCT algorithm, giving it higher compression efficiency than MP3. Development further advanced when Lars Liljeryd introduced
10384-441: The internet, AAC is a strong contender due to some unwavering industry support. AAC is a wideband audio coding algorithm that exploits two primary coding strategies to dramatically reduce the amount of data needed to represent high-quality digital audio: The actual encoding process consists of the following steps: The MPEG-4 audio standard does not define a single or small set of highly efficient compression schemes but rather
10502-440: The last version of the operating system; set to be released in the third quarter of 2021. It was released to the general public on October 5, 2021. In September 2021, it was announced that the company had acquired Takelessons, an online platform that connects students and tutors in numerous subjects. The acquisition positioned Microsoft to grow its presence in the market of providing online education to large numbers of people. In
10620-563: The list of patents from the SEC terms, the last baseline AAC patent expires in 2028, and the last patent for all AAC extensions mentioned expires in 2031. Some extensions have been added to the first AAC standard (defined in MPEG-2 Part 7 in 1997): In addition to the MP4 , 3GP and other container formats based on ISO base media file format for file storage, AAC audio data was first packaged in
10738-561: The low delay AAC ( AAC-LD ) object type, bit-sliced arithmetic coding (BSAC) object type, parametric audio coding using harmonic and individual line plus noise and error resilient (ER) versions of object types. It also defined four new audio profiles: High Quality Audio Profile, Low Delay Audio Profile, Natural Audio Profile and Mobile Audio Internetworking Profile. The HE-AAC Profile (AAC LC with SBR ) and AAC Profile (AAC LC) were first standardized in ISO/IEC 14496-3:2001/Amd 1:2003. The HE-AAC v2 Profile (AAC LC with SBR and Parametric Stereo)
10856-404: The masking properties of the human ear, followed in the early 1980s with the code-excited linear prediction (CELP) algorithm which achieved a significant compression ratio for its time. Perceptual coding is used by modern audio compression formats such as MP3 and AAC . Discrete cosine transform (DCT), developed by Nasir Ahmed , T. Natarajan and K. R. Rao in 1974, provided the basis for
10974-525: The merger of its PC and Xbox divisions, with Phil Spencer announcing that Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps would be the focus for Microsoft's gaming in the future. On January 24, 2017, Microsoft showcased Intune for Education at the BETT 2017 education technology conference in London . Intune for Education is a new cloud-based application and device management service for the education sector. In May 2016,
11092-487: The metaverse". Microsoft also named Phil Spencer , head of the Xbox brand since 2014, the inaugural CEO of the newly established Microsoft Gaming division, which now houses the Xbox operations team and the three publishers in the company's portfolio (Xbox Game Studios, ZeniMax Media, Activision Blizzard). Microsoft has not released statements regarding Activision's recent legal controversies regarding employee abuse, but reports have alleged that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick ,
11210-452: The name "Micro-Soft", short for micro-computer software. In August 1977, the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office of ASCII Microsoft . Microsoft moved its headquarters to Bellevue, Washington , in January 1979. Microsoft entered the operating system (OS) business in 1980 with its own version of Unix called Xenix , but it
11328-699: The process fall under the Azure Machine Learning and the Azure IoT Hub platforms. In September 2018, Microsoft discontinued Skype Classic . On October 10, 2018, Microsoft joined the Open Invention Network community despite holding more than 60,000 patents. In November 2018, Microsoft agreed to supply 100,000 Microsoft HoloLens headsets to the United States military in order to "increase lethality by enhancing
11446-521: The release of Windows Phone , Microsoft undertook a gradual rebranding of its product range throughout 2011 and 2012, with the corporation's logos, products, services, and websites adopting the principles and concepts of the Metro design language . Microsoft unveiled Windows 8 , an operating system designed to power both personal computers and tablet computers , in Taipei in June 2011. A developer preview
11564-644: The release of the IBM PC in August 1981. IBM had copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS , so other companies had to reverse engineer it for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles , but no such restriction applied to the operating systems. Microsoft eventually became the leading PC operating systems vendor. The company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as with
11682-583: The requirements referred to as "transparent" for the ITU at 128 kbit/s for stereo, and 384 kbit/s for 5.1 audio. AAC uses only a modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) algorithm, giving it higher compression efficiency than MP3, which uses a hybrid coding algorithm that is part MDCT and part FFT . AAC is the default or standard audio format for iPhone , iPod , iPad , Nintendo DSi , Nintendo 3DS , Apple Music , iTunes , DivX Plus Web Player , PlayStation 4 and various Nokia Series 40 phones. It
11800-507: The role of CFO. On February 4, 2014, Steve Ballmer stepped down as CEO of Microsoft and was succeeded by Satya Nadella , who previously led Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise division. On the same day, John W. Thompson took on the role of chairman, in place of Bill Gates, who continued to participate as a technology advisor. Thompson became the second chairman in Microsoft's history. On April 25, 2014, Microsoft acquired Nokia Devices and Services for $ 7.2 billion. This new subsidiary
11918-407: The same month, Microsoft acquired Australia-based video editing software company Clipchamp . In October 2021, Microsoft announced that it began rolling out end-to-end encryption (E2EE) support for Microsoft Teams calls in order to secure business communication while using video conferencing software. Users can ensure that their calls are encrypted and can utilize a security code that both parties on
12036-927: The same month, Microsoft announced the open source implementation of Windows Forms and the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) which will allow for further movement of the company toward the transparent release of key frameworks used in developing Windows desktop applications and software. December also saw the company discontinue the Microsoft Edge project in favor of Chromium backends for their browsers. On February 20, 2019, Microsoft Corp said it will offer its cyber security service AccountGuard to 12 new markets in Europe including Germany, France and Spain, to close security gaps and protect customers in political space from hacking. In February 2019, hundreds of Microsoft employees protested
12154-566: The standards governing body for the DVB suite , supports AAC, HE-AAC and HE-AAC v2 audio coding in DVB applications since at least 2004. DVB broadcasts which use the H.264 compression for video normally use HE-AAC for audio. In April 2003, Apple brought mainstream attention to AAC by announcing that its iTunes and iPod products would support songs in MPEG-4 AAC format (via a firmware update for older iPods). Customers could download music in
12272-467: The team finished the Web browser, and instead were included in the Windows 95 Plus! pack. Backed by a high-profile marketing campaign and what The New York Times called "the splashiest, most frenzied, most expensive introduction of a computer product in the industry's history," Windows 95 quickly became a success. Branching out into new markets in 1996, Microsoft and General Electric 's NBC unit created
12390-737: The total data needed to represent a sound but can be de-coded to its original, uncompressed form. A lossy audio coding format additionally reduces the bit resolution of the sound on top of compression, which results in far less data at the cost of irretrievably lost information. Transmitted (streamed) audio is most often compressed using lossy audio codecs as the smaller size is far more convenient for distribution. The most widely used audio coding formats are MP3 and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), both of which are lossy formats based on modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) and perceptual coding algorithms. Lossless audio coding formats such as FLAC and Apple Lossless are sometimes available, though at
12508-407: The user. On September 21, 2020, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire video game company ZeniMax Media , the parent company of Bethesda Softworks , for about $ 7.5 billion, with the deal expected to occur in the second half of 2021 fiscal year. On March 9, 2021, the acquisition was finalized and ZeniMax Media became part of Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios division. The total price of the deal
12626-658: The year 2000, after its fourth-quarter report raised concerns among investors on the poor showings of both Windows 8 and the Surface tablet. Microsoft suffered a loss of more than US$ 32 billion. In line with the maturing PC business, in July 2013, Microsoft announced that it would reorganize the business into four new business divisions, namely Operating systems, Apps, Cloud, and Devices. All previous divisions will be dissolved into new divisions without any workforce cuts. On September 3, 2013, Microsoft agreed to buy Nokia 's mobile unit for $ 7 billion, following Amy Hood taking
12744-542: Was MS-DOS that solidified the company's dominance. IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft in November 1980 to provide a version of the CP/M OS to be used in the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC). For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products which it branded as MS-DOS, although IBM rebranded it to IBM PC DOS . Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS following
12862-438: Was $ 8.1 billion. On September 22, 2020, Microsoft announced that it had an exclusive license to use OpenAI 's GPT-3 artificial intelligence language generator. The previous version of GPT-3 , called GPT-2 , made headlines for being "too dangerous to release" and had numerous capabilities, including designing websites, prescribing medication, answering questions, and penning articles. On November 10, 2020, Microsoft released
12980-442: Was a commercial failure and such phones with integrated music players did not gain mainstream popularity until 2005 when the trend of having AAC as well as MP3 support continued. Most new smartphones and music-themed phones support playback of these formats. Almost all current computer media players include built-in decoders for AAC, or can utilize a library to decode it. On Microsoft Windows , DirectShow can be used this way with
13098-468: Was completed in March 2022. In 2021, in part due to the strong quarterly earnings spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic , Microsoft's valuation came to nearly $ 2 trillion. The increased necessity for remote work and distance education drove demand for cloud computing and grew the company's gaming sales. On June 24, 2021, Microsoft announced Windows 11 during a Livestream. The announcement came with confusion after Microsoft announced Windows 10 would be
13216-631: Was first specified in ISO/IEC 14496-3:2005/Amd 2:2006. The Parametric Stereo audio object type used in HE-AAC v2 was first defined in ISO/IEC 14496-3:2001/Amd 2:2004. The current version of the AAC standard is defined in ISO/IEC 14496-3:2009. AAC+ v2 is also standardized by ETSI ( European Telecommunications Standards Institute ) as TS 102005. The MPEG-4 Part 3 standard also contains other ways of compressing sound. These include lossless compression formats, synthetic audio and low bit-rate compression formats generally used for speech. Advanced Audio Coding
13334-428: Was first used for speech coding compression, with linear predictive coding (LPC). Initial concepts for LPC date back to the work of Fumitada Itakura ( Nagoya University ) and Shuzo Saito ( Nippon Telegraph and Telephone ) in 1966. During the 1970s, Bishnu S. Atal and Manfred R. Schroeder at Bell Labs developed a form of LPC called adaptive predictive coding (APC), a perceptual coding algorithm that exploited
13452-693: Was released on September 13, which was subsequently replaced by a consumer preview on February 29, 2012, and released to the public in May. The Surface was unveiled on June 18, becoming the first computer in the company's history to have its hardware made by Microsoft. On June 25, Microsoft paid US$ 1.2 billion to buy the social network Yammer . On July 31, they launched the Outlook.com webmail service to compete with Gmail . On September 4, 2012, Microsoft released Windows Server 2012 . In July 2012, Microsoft sold its 50% stake in MSNBC, which it had run as
13570-592: Was released, with its server sibling, Windows Server 2016 , released in September 2016. In Q1 2015, Microsoft was the third-largest maker of mobile phones , selling 33 million units (7.2% of all). While a large majority (at least 75%) of them do not run any version of Windows Phone — those other phones are not categorized as smartphones by Gartner – in the same timeframe 8 million Windows smartphones (2.5% of all smartphones) were made by all manufacturers (mostly Microsoft). Microsoft's share of
13688-425: Was renamed Microsoft Mobile Oy. On September 15, 2014, Microsoft acquired the video game development company Mojang , best known for Minecraft , for $ 2.5 billion. On June 8, 2017, Microsoft acquired Hexadite , an Israeli security firm, for $ 100 million. On January 21, 2015, Microsoft announced the release of their first Interactive whiteboard , Microsoft Surface Hub . On July 29, 2015, Windows 10
13806-590: Was reported that Microsoft was in talks to acquire TikTok after the Trump administration ordered ByteDance to divest ownership of the application to the U.S. On August 3, 2020, after speculation on the deal, Donald Trump stated that Microsoft could buy the application, however, it should be completed by September 15, 2020, and that the United States Department of the Treasury should receive
13924-469: Was the first implementation of video H.264/AVC with audio HE-AAC in Terrestrial HDTV broadcasting service on the planet. In December 2007, Brazil started broadcasting terrestrial DTV standard called International ISDB-Tb that implements video coding H.264/AVC with audio AAC-LC on main program (single or multi) and video H.264/AVC with audio HE-AACv2 in the 1seg mobile sub-program. The ETSI ,
#665334