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Digital
Omnifone sign up to new Dolby file format
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 17 February 2010
OK, back to Barcelona and the Mobile World Congress, and another announcement from London-based mobile music service provider Omnifone, who have already used the conference to launch a new Android-compliant implementation of their MusicStation service.
This time the mobile music experts have announced they will be the first company to use a new cross-platform digital file format from the Dolby boys, called Dolby Pulse and created by pumping content through something called the Dolby Media Generator. Omnifone say they will encode their entire 6.5 million track catalogue using the new Dolby technology.
The aim, of course, is to have music files that are faster to download, and which deliver better sound quality. While consumer demand has made the MP3 the digital file of choice – mainly because it remains the most universal format in terms of devices that will play it – some argue that it terms of download efficiency and sound quality it’s far from the best format to use.
As you’d expect, Dolby say that their new digital file format provides the “optimal combination of quality, efficiency, and integrity of content”. Dolby Labs CEO Kevin Yeaman, meanwhile, says this: “As digital content services and networked devices become part of our day-to-day lives, the ability to deliver digital content in the most efficient file format becomes increasingly important. Dolby’s collaboration with Omnifone to pioneer the first commercial use of both the Dolby Pulse format and Dolby Media Generator will bring a new level of speed, quality, and efficiency to Omnifone’s digital media services”.
Omnifone top man Rob Lewis told CMU: “Omnifone is proud to be Dolby’s first customer to bring the high-performance, high-efficiency Dolby Pulse format to market. Consumers demand great sound quality, fast downloads, and streaming, and want to be able to store more media on their connected devices. Omnifone’s decision to encode tracks using Dolby Media Generator into the Dolby Pulse format in 2010 will deliver highly efficient track sizes, faster delivery speeds, and higher sound quality per megabyte than traditional formats like MP3”.
