THOMSON INTRODUCES 'MP3HD' AUDIO FORMAT
The popular mp3 format was co-developed by Thomson and the Fraunhofer Institute IIS. The new mp3HD format includes additional side information, which, together with the mp3 portion of the file, can be decoded by an mp3HD-capable decoder. Standard mp3 players can simply play the mp3 portion of the file.
The added file size required for lossless compression is no longer a limiting factor, thanks to the continuous increase in Internet bandwidth capacity and file storage size.
Pros can visit the websites www.all4mp3.com or www.mp3HD.com, where they can download free mp3HD utilities, such as a command line encoder, to create their own content and play it back with the Winamp plug-in. The evaluation encoder enables the creation of mp3HD files out of stereo material in .wav form at 16-bit precision and 44.1kHz. It is available for both Linux and Windows platforms. The mp3HD Winamp plug-in for Windows is capable playing back the lossless files as a bit-exact replica of the original.