AudioBIFS: Describing audio scenes with the MPEG-4 multimedia standard

We present an overview of the AudioBIFS system, part of the Binary Format for Scene Description (BIFS) tool in the MPEG-4 International Standard. AudioBIFS is the tool that integrates the synthetic and natural sound coding functions in MPEG-4. It allows the flexible construction of soundtracks and sound scenes using compressed sound, sound synthesis, streaming audio, interactive and terminal-dependent presentation, three-dimensional (3-D) spatialization, environmental auralization, and dynamic download of custom signal-processing effects algorithms. MPEG-4 sound scenes are based on a model that is a superset of the model in VRML 2.0, and we describe how MPEG-4 is built upon VRML and the new capabilities provided by MPEG-4. We discuss the use of structured audio orchestra language, the MPEG-4 SAOL, for writing downloadable effects, present an example sound scene built with AudioBIFS, and describe the current state of implementations of the standard.