Speech Coding in MPEG-4

While previous MPEG Audio standards mainly were focused on the representation of audio signals close to or equal to CD quality, the new MPEG-4 Audio standard extends the range of applicability towards significantly lower bit rates. Furthermore it offers extended functionalities for the representation of natural and even synthetic audio signals in an object oriented fashion. This paper gives a brief overview on the complete audio part of the MPEG-4 standard and more detailed information on its parts related to speech coding.