meridian lossless packing (DVD) (MLP)
Meridian's Lossless Packing(MLP) is a lossless audio compression for multichannel audio developed by Meridian Inc. that is considered the quasi- standard for DVD-Audio.
The MLP process is a very efficient method that compresses audio data streams by over 50% on average. Unlike Dolby Digital, Digital Theatre Sound( DTS) and MPEG, MLP compression works losslessly by storing multiply packed data and returning it to its original state during decompression.
MLP compression works in PCM format with sampling rates of 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 96 kHz and 192 kHz. The quatization is 16 bit, 20 bit and 24 bit. At the lowest sampling rate of 44.1 kHz and a quantization of 16 bits, up to 25 hours of music in monophony and 12 hours of stereophony can be stored on one DVD-Audio. Special MLP decoders are required for playback, which restore the original signal without affecting the quality.
Dolby TrueHD, which is based on MLP (Meridian Lossless Packing) compression, is an enhanced audio codec for Blu-ray Disc( BD) and HD DVD.