Prof. Karlheinz Brandenburg, senior professor at TU Ilmenau, was honored by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) on October 19, 2023, for his contributions to the development of MPEG standards for digital audio compression in Hollywood, USA. This puts him in a line with other renowned personalities who have rendered outstanding services to the media industry, such as George Lucas, James Cameron and Peter Jackson.
Karlheinz Brandenburg is a renowned scientist, inventor and entrepreneur. His visionary work has played a decisive role in shaping today's landscape of digital audio technology. He is known worldwide as the co-inventor of mp3 and the MPEG audio standards.
In 1989, Brandenburg received his doctorate from the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in the Department of Electrical Engineering with a thesis on digital audio coding and perception-orchestrated measurement techniques. The research results of his dissertation are the basis of MPEG-1 Layer 3 (mp3), MPEG-2 Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) and most other modern audio compression techniques. Together with his colleagues at Fraunhofer IIS and the MPEG Audio Standardization Group, he pioneered the development and establishment of this revolutionary invention in the 1990s. The technology was standardized as ISO/IEC MPEG-Audio Layer 3. For these achievements, he is now being honored by SMTPE with the Digital Processing Medal.
Prof. Brandenburg is pleased about the recognition of his work, far beyond the audio industry:
The appreciation of the early work by the SMPTE shows that mp3 and AAC have an importance far beyond the field of audio signal processing technologies. This is a great honor. As always, I also thank everyone else here who contributed to this development.
Prior to his current position as managing director of Brandenburg Labs GmbH and senior professor at TU Ilmenau, he was institute director at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology (IDMT) and headed the Electronic Media Technology Group at TU Ilmenau as a full professor. The Digital Processing Medal was established in 2012 and recognizes significant technical achievements in the digital processing of content for motion pictures, television, games or related media. It is awarded by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. This is an internationally recognized professional organization with more than 5,000 members worldwide, made up of creative experts, media technicians and engineers. To drive and sustain change in the technology industry, SMPTE promotes innovation, creativity and development. The society has honored many well-known names in the industry, including Thomas A. Edison, George Eastman, Samuel L. Warner, David Sarnoff, Walt Disney, Ray Dolby, George Lucas, Richard Edlund, James Cameron and Peter Jackson.
About Brandenburg Labs
Brandenburg Labs GmbH creates intuitive and realistic listening experiences with immersive audio for headphones, allowing users to dive deep into any soundscape. Brandenburg Labs was founded in 2019 by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Karlheinz Brandenburg. He is known as the co-inventor of the mp3 format. Meanwhile, the interdisciplinary team in Ilmenau, Thuringia comprises 18 employees. In the use of headphones, the creation of an immersive audio experience has presented science and industry with enormous challenges for decades. Brandenburg Labs faces these and aims to place solutions and products on the market that enrich digital life using immersive audio. As a spin-off of the TU Ilmenau and the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology, Brandenburg Labs can draw on many years of research in the field of audio at these institutions. The technology makes it possible to recreate real acoustic environments or create new realistic listening environments via headphones. In this way, virtual sounds fit seamlessly into the lives of users and bridge the gap between the real and digital worlds. In the future, Brandenburg Labs will market Augmented Auditory Reality (AAR) systems as well as intelligent headphones (PARty).