Enhanced variations of the MPEG-4 Spectral Band Replication (SBR) and MPEG-D MPEG Surround parametric coding tools are integrated into the USAC codec.
The Extended High Efficiency AAC profile was designed for applications relying on a consistent performance at low data rates while being able to decode all existing AAC-LC, HE-AAC and HE-AACv2 content.
[7] xHE-AAC is a mandatory audio codec in the Digital Radio Mondiale standard[9][10][11] and is a trademark of Fraunhofer.
[14][15] Netflix reported that users switched from speakers to headphones 16% less often (due to poor sound quality or inadequate volume) on high dynamic range content when using xHE-AAC instead of HE-AAC.
Netflix also explained that xHE-AAC allowed them to begin streaming with adaptive audio bitrates to Android devices.