I just found out that Via Licensing/Dolby has posted a new HE AAC licensing page and rates on its web site. It appears they charging for patent licensing rights to developers of PC software apps only a bit higher for HE AAC than straight AAC LC. I always was told on HA that the rates were the same. Now that Via has published the HE AAC rates and put up a HE AAC licensing page, it appears they will be doing a major push to get software developers to adopt HE AAC into their products.

The new HE AAC licensing page is at:
http://www.vialicensing.com/products/HE_AAC/

The patent licensing rates for HE AAC are at:
http://www.vialicensing.com/products/HE_AA...ense.terms.html

The patent licensing rates for standard AAC (i.e. AAC LC) are at:
http://www.vialicensing.com/products/mpeg4...ense.terms.html

Since they charge "per channel", a stereo decoder or encoder is twice the posted amount listed on the table I believe.

So it appears for a Stereo consumer PC software program it would cost in patent licensing fees:

Decoder only (i.e. MP4 audio player) $0.64 per player with HE AAC stereo support (with a maximum per year fee of $32,000 per PC decoder program)

Encoder & Decoder PC software Either $1.80 or $1.56 (for over 50,000 units per year) per player with HE AAC stereo support (with a maximum fee per year of $344,000 per PC encoder/decoder program)

So it appears that the rates they will are now charging are only a bit higher than the current standard AAC rate (player $.50 per unit for stereo AAC, encoder/player $1.50 per unit for stereo PC software).

So for $.64 per PC player software or $1.80 (or less) for a PC encoder/decoder application, the software developer gets both AAC LC and HE AAC stereo patent licenses.

At that small difference in rate, it should be a "no brainer" for existing AAC LC only apps to upgrade to a HE AAC patent license. New software developers seeking AAC support in their products should consider the HE AAC license also IMO.

At least now we know what Via is charging the software development companies for licensing. So if you see an extra charge of $50.00 quoted for adding AAC LC or HE AAC support to a product we know what they are really paying to VIA ($.64 or less for mp4 audio players and 1.80 or less per player for software encoder/decoder combo programs)...

As a sidebar I am including rates from mp3licensing.com to show what software developers pay for licensing BOTH (this is new) the MP3 patents AND Fraunhofer or CodingTechnology's encoder/decoder software:

MP3 software decoder/player $.75 per unit or $60,000 one time
MP3 software encoder/decoder $5.75 per unit
MP3Pro software decoder/player $1.25 per unit or $90,000 one time
MP3Pro software encoder/decoder $6.25 per unit
or you can just buy the MP3 patent (without Fraunhofer's code):
MP3 decoder patents only: $.75 per unit or $50,000 one time
MP3 encoder and decoder patents: $3.25 per unit (or $2.50 a unit if you bought a $50,000 decoder patent one time paid up license)

I found it interesting, and you can clearly see that MPEG 4 HE AAC Audio patents are cheaper to license than what Fraunhoffer/Coding Technologies is charging for licensing per unit.

HE AAC player $.64 vs. $.75 per unit for MP3 patent only OR $.75 for MP3 patent and Fraunhoffer's MP3 library software license

HE AAC encoder/decoder $1.80 or $1.56 per unit vs. $3.25 for MP3 patents only (no code) or $5.75 for MP3 patents and Fraunhoffer encoder/decoder code or $6.25 per unit for MP3Pro patents and Coding Technologies code. Note that there is no MP3Pro patent only license being shown as available.

For more about MP3 patent licensing and rates:
http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/software.html

Also this does not include broadcast/distribution royalties for using the MP3 format that must be paid for commercial use/distribution of MP3 files:
http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/emd.html

So you can clearly see that HE AAC or AAC LC licensing is MUCH CHEAPER than even plain old MP3 patent licensing... This plus the MP3 broadcast/distribution license fees should encourage all users to upgrade from using/supporting the MP3 format to MPEG 4 AAC Audio. AAC requires no extra distribution or broadcast licensing fees like using MP3 does.

Also interesting is that Fraunhofer appears to be taking a play book from Microsoft in charging exactly the same per unit for the MP3 patent license as they charge for the license with their own MP3 decoder software to software developers. Looks like they have their heart set on stamping out LAME and other MP3 player/decoder implementaions by giving their MP3 software decoder implementations away for basically FREE... Just thought you might find all this "nice to know".

That's not so bad (for a commercial app which sells well or if you are Real).



Well, correct me if I am wrong but these are only the patent royalties. If you were to license a decoder from e.g Ahead you would obviously have to pay more.

Old news

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ndpost&p=177122



Where have you seen it? I don't remember reading such claim.



yes, of course.

To pay the patent royalties only, you would have to come up with your own implementation.

Well it was sure buried in that other post and I would have likely not seen the link about the HE AAC licensing fees

Also I have done some comparisons of the new HE AAC patent licensing fees to both the MP3 and MP3Pro patent and patent/software combo licenses here.

I thought people might like to see this. MP3 patent licensing rates appear to be very high...

In addition, neither AAC nor HE-AAC come with so-called "streaming" fees like MP3 - so selling and/or broadcasting AAC and HE-AAC content is not subject to any royalty for audio coding patents.

That is one huge reason why I love MPEG 4 AAC Ivan! MP3 streaming fees and their minimum annual payments are not worth the hassle of using MP3 any more in my opinion. Roll full steam ahead with MPEG 4 Audio I say!

Just think how much live365.com has to pay in streaming fees and patent fees to use/support both MP3 and MP3PRO formats (players and encoders). I am sure they are passing that cost on to their stations monthly fees...

Now if only WinAmp, MusicMatch and a few other critical audio software publishers would get with the HE AAC program we would see some real momentum building for HE AAC and AAC LC

Also Apple, please add HE AAC support as you already have and pay for the AAC LC patent licenses. Adding HE AAC would be a real plus for Apple's end users (iTunes and iPod users).