Background.

K+K Research is a development team working with audio compression technology. We combine forces from other tasks, our main programmer (KA) is a very skilled programmer working in C++ (and other languages). Our main optimizer (KM) has long time experience from beta-testing various other programs and has been working in the audio field for two decades.
Music Publisher 01 is the first product from this innovative team, we have plans for several new products in the future.

Products.

Music Publisher 01 is the first product from this team. It is also the only complete software package for the moment, new products are expected to be ready in the near future.For special applications an AAC decoder is also available, it gives accurate WAV-files of AAC files (and it is very fast too).

MP01 Features.

Music Publisher 01 consists of several elements. A high quality, fully optimized, ISO-compliant AAC encoder, a Frontend / GUI for controlling this encoder , with various settings for best performance for a given bitrate and music track (or style) and latest an AAC plug-in for use with Winamp (2.**) to play the AAC files.
You can see picture of the frontend on main page and this will give you a good idea of the available functions and features.
MP01 works from wav-files, if your source is DAT you have to input through AES/EBU digital input on your soundcard and if your source is CD-audio you have to convert (rip) the audio tracks to wav files. (you will find links to 2 good rippers below).
Encoding speed is reasonable , 2 times track lenght on a P2-300 (pretty fast for AAC) and CPU usage is also tolerable , recent developments cut 40% off this , giving app. 18% cpu usage on a P2-300.

2-channel Applications.

The main application for our 2-channel AAC package (Music Publisher 01) is Music Publishing over the Internet (other medias are of course possible like CDR...) and the software package is designed to make this an easy task.
Other uses would be studio => radio transfer , studio => post production transfer or similar.
We do not have encryption (*) but we do have watermarking (so a music file can be traced to the specific encoder/program it was originally made with).
It is also worth mentioning that our encoder and player plugin is 100% ISO-compliant for compatibility with future AAC programs.(+ MP4)
(*) Encryption available to costumers specifications and order.

Multi-channel Applications.

We are working on a multi-channel version of Music Publisher 01, combined with a hardware encoder / decoder card (with its own processor). Of course its too early to say much about this, we can think of several uses for this, including;
Music publishing in multitrack/multichannel audio
Multitrack recording (computer based)
Sorround sound for film/multimedia
Multi language speak
and a few others too...

Comparisons of AAC.

AAC is the best audio compression technology today and it gives far better performance in lower bitrate than any other encoding algorithm. This performance is both in "measured" performance and in perceived performance (under listening tests). MPEG organization has found that AAC in 128 kbps gives same or better performance than MP3 in 160-192 kbps or than MP2 in 192-256 kbps.
We think this is right and I would like to add that MP01 gives far better sound quality than does Liquifier Pro 4 (with commercial Fraunhofer AAC).Apparently AAC isnt just AAC. Here is a linkt to KM's site with comparisons of audio quality , including MP01 and many other formats and programs;
Best of audio compression

Prices and Licensing.

AAC Technology is covered with several patents and we have to pay license fee to use this.This means that we cant just give a price tag, but have to negotiate a price and license deal for every user.
Please tell us more about yourself, your company and your application(s) for Music Publisher01.
Please also include the URL of your business / organization, we will do our best to make you a fair offer for using our programs and AAC technology.
And we shall come right back to you after evaluating your applications and your needs.
An estimated sales and licensing scheme for company X could be like this:
Price os MP01 : $499 ,
Share of AAC license: $500 (unlimited no. of tracks,2 years),
license pr. sold/downloaded decoder ; $0.90.

Future plans.

First plans are to have a multi-channel version of MP01 , and a hardware encoder/decoder. Then we can see a market and a potential in home-stereo hardware player and also in a car hardware player, all utilizing AAC , the best audio compression available now and for the near future.

Links.

We have a few links for you, most of them about AAC technology;
Best of audio compression
EAC RIPPER
WINAMP 2.10
CDEX RIPPER
AUDIO FRONTIERS - encoding formats explained