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Thursday March 19, 2009
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 Thomson, one of the companies which developed the MP3 format, said Thursday that it has developed a backward-compatible, lossless MP3HD format for the next generation of music.
Thomson has launched two Web sites dedicated to the new formats, at All4MP3.com or MP3HD.com, and seeded them with an evaluation encoder that will allow users to create MP3HD files out of 16-bit, 44.1-KHz-encoded stereo .WAV files. Thomson also created an MP3HD WinAmp plug-in for Windows to play the files back as part of the same package.
The ubiquitous MP3 format is what's known as a lossy format, tossing away what the algorithm considered to be unnecessary portions of the audio track in order to compress the file down to a more compact size. Real audiophiles turn to algortithms like FLAC, which rips audio losslessly to maintain the integrity of the source material.
But the real question is this: Who's going to support MP3HD? It's not unusual for new formats to be backed by other companies at launch, as an indication that the rest of the industry needs to sit up and take notice. At this point, I haven't seen any other companies announcing support for the format. I've put these questions to Thomson, and we'll see what the company says. I'll also be updating this story as I learn new information.
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March 20, 2009 12:09 PM
I've been on mp3's almost exclusively for the past 2-3 years. Just yesterday though, I put in a CD and did a side-by-side comparison. The results weren't pretty...I can't believe I went so long in the dark.
MP3's stink!
Long live the CD/lossless audio!
March 20, 2009 1:48 PM
MP3 is too ubiquitous now. Unless all those iPods can be supported with a firmware fix, I don't see this happening.
Also, we live in a 'good enough' society. There maybe noticeable differences between CD and MP3 but people generally don't sit down exclusively to listen to music. More often than not, people listen to music while doing something else, or listen to music in a less than optimum environment (eg in the car or on the move through earbuds).
Therefore, MP3 is good enough.
March 21, 2009 3:44 PM
Lossless vs lossy compression is confusing enough for unsophisticated users. As it stands, mp3 is known by users as a lossy format. This confuses things even farther for the end user.
FLAC is an excellent open source lossless format unencumbered by ownership or licensing issues (unlike MP3HD). It is the defacto lossless standard- highly developed, well supported and a great candidate for a truly universal lossless format. FLAC is free, easy to use and has support for even higher resolutions and multiple channel configurations if desired. The only historical drawback has been less than universal native playback support (without unencoding files first), but as it's popularity has grown, there has appeared more and more devices supporting native playback. WMP, WinAmp, Foobar all support FLAC. IPODs will direct FLAC playback currently via Rockbox. Apple could easily release firmware to do the same.
I personally hope lossy MP3HD dies, avoiding confusing people farther with an unending parade of multiple formats and blurring the now hard enough to understand black and white difference between lossy and lossless media formats.
Follow the money, this appears to be another battle over the potential revenue from proprietary formats, confusing the enduser just like Betamax vs VHS or DVDHD vs Blueray. In this case the superior format already exists, clearly differentiated from lossles formats, without future $trings attached.
May 4, 2009 2:32 AM
The MPEG body has tried all they could since 2002 in order to establish themselves as standard for lossless audio quality, something about the HD-AAC was threatening to make some noise a few years ago. Nothing worked yet. It is important to understand that it's backward compatibility is due to the fact that mp3 players that don't support the HD decoding can play the standard version. The mess still goes on and on. Some people reported also that, for instanse, if you go and transfer the MP3HD music to a player that at least supports the standard MP3, you'll also be transfering the aditional 25megs (or so) from the lossless layer, even your player not supporting the lossless decoding.
There's a lot of discussions about this format on hydrogenaudio. You can just google "MP3HD" site:www.hydrogenaudio.org. There you'll find that it has a lot of technical flaws as well.
FLAC, although restricted in most part to a certain public, has more popularity, stores, artists and even the EBU have adopted the format for distribution of content in lossless-compressed audio. Needless to mention the support for FLAC in one of the most popular media players, the Winamp, responsible also for the increase in popularity of the MP3. Even Sony put their eforts on the format with the Sound Forge 9, and now Songbird is a great thing for those who want music in FLAC jukeboxed. FLAC has a very flexible tagging (Vorbis Comments), fast decoding, which is an atractive thing for developers, supports up to 96khz/24 bit in audio resolution.
Well, forget about the technical things mentioned about FLAC. The most important thing is that FLAC really works for everyone who wants to preserve your music, and it is supported by many digital music servers or similar high-end equipments. If you want to take your music on the go, and your car-stereo or any other device does not support FLAC, use LAME MP3. It offers the same flexibility (as FLAC do for hi-fi) and workes everywhere.
Have a great listening!