The ISO/IEC MPEG-2 Audio NBC (Non Backwards Compatible) audio coding work was started to provide MPEG-2 with the best audio quality at low data rates without any restrictions due to compatibility requirements. This paper describes the main features of the NBC advanced coding system (CD 13818-7). NBC combines the coding efficiency of a high resolution filter bank, prediction techniques and Huffmann coding with additional functionalities aimed to deliver broadcast quality at very low data rates (64 kb/s per channel).
