ATSC Doc. A/52: Digital Audio Compression Standard (AC-3)

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The United States Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) was formed by the member organizations of the Joint Committee on InterSociety Coordination (JCIC)1 , recognizing that the prompt, efficient and effective development of a coordinated set of national standards is essential to the future development of domestic television services.

One of the activities of the ATSC is exploring the need for and, where appropriate, coordinating the development of voluntary national technical standards for Advanced Television Systems (ATV). The ATSC Executive Committee assigned the work of documenting the U.S. ATV standard to a number of specialist groups working under the Technology Group on Distribution (T3). The Audio Specialist Group (T3/S7) was charged with documenting the ATV audio standard.

This document was prepared initially by the Audio Specialist Group as part of its efforts to document the United States Advanced Television broadcast standard. It was approved by the Technology Group on Distribution on September 26, 1994, and by the full ATSC Membership as an ATSC Standard on November 10, 1994. Annex A, “AC-3 Elementary Streams in an MPEG-2 Multiplex,” was approved by the Technology Group on Distribution on February 23, 1995, and by the full ATSC Membership on April 12, 1995. Annex B, “AC-3 Data Stream in IEC958 Interface,” and Annex C, “AC-3 Karaoke Mode,” were approved by the Technology Group on Distribution on October 24, 1995 and by the full ATSC Membership on December 20, 1995. ATSC Standard A/53, “Digital Television Standard for HDTV Transmission”, references this document and describes how the audio coding algorithm described herein is applied in the U.S. ATV standard.

At the time of release of this document, the system description contained herein had not been verified by the transmission of signals from independently developed encoders to separately developed decoders.