Optimal codec selection algorithm for audio streaming

Currently, one of the most valued parameters by the Internet Service Providers is the bandwidth. Generally, multimedia networks transmit a huge amount of data, so saving bandwidth in multimedia streaming, means saving costs. Moreover, real time multimedia streaming is a critical case, because it is not delay tolerant and error tolerant. In this paper, we study for each bitrate and for each music genre the most appropriate audio codec to save bandwidth. We have observed that if the used hardware (server, clients or network hardware) has resource limitations, some codecs are more efficient than others. In this paper, we describe the performed study and propose an optimum audio codec selection algorithm based on our study.