Lossless MP3 Format Released – But No Claims for Quality

PC Magazine reported the upcoming availability of a new format from the designers of the mp3 format, Thomson, also known as the owner of the RCA and Magnavox brand names.

Stated is that the format becomes lossless, yet no claims of fidelity are made, as true fidelity might be  a very tall order. The format is said to be completely backwards compatible, which in doing brings up a question about its audio quality.

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 a Web site dedicated to the new formats, at All4MP3.com or MP3HD.com, and seeded it 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.

Lossy is an understatement. The quality is poor by audiophile standards, and frequently brings audible artifacting into the music by using ‘bad approximations’ of the original sound.

In doing so, however, some of the audio content is lost, a problem for those who want to experience the full quality of the original source material.

Young people don’t find this unacceptable, which is probably caused by two things – never having heard anything of better quality in their lives, and never having heard the ultimate reference, real, unamplified music, in a live setting.

The MP3HD format maintains backward compatibility with the basic MP3 format, a key advantage for the format, which enters the market with several already established lossless audio codecs already in place, including FLAC, HD-AAC, and Windows Media’s own lossless format. However, if not supported, the MP3HD file will likely play back as just a generic MP3 file.

Is ‘likely’ a poor choice of words, or a harbinger of unacceptable compatibility problems?

“An mp3HD file is simply a “.mp3″ file including a standard mp3 file and additional information that is stored in the id3 tag (where other info on the track like artist name, song name, etc.. is also stored),” a spokeswoman for Thomson said in an email. “Therefore, an mp3 player that is not yet mp3HD capable will simply play the mp3 part of the file, as you said, as a generic mp3 file.”

According to Thomson, the format supports bitrates comparable to those formats, or about 500 Kbits/s to 900 Kbits/s.

A four-minute rock song encoded at 876 kbit/s will equate to 26 Mbytes, according to Thomson; other recordings could be ripped at 786 Kbits/s or 605 Kbits/s, for an average 4-minute file size of 23.5 Mbytes or 18 Mbytes.

There is always a trade off – some will want to continue with ‘worse than AM radio quality sound’ in the name of space consumption. Is it really better to have 4 hours of lousy sound versus 1 – 2 hours of sound that approximates music? In my own frame of reference using a really compact music player for a sports workout, or a bicycle ride is the only time I’d make that compromise, and more times than not, I would simply use a portable Walkman type FM radio.

One open question: royalty rates. Thomson charges 75 cents per PC software decoder, and between $2.50 and $5.00 for each codec; a hardware decoder is 75 cents, while Thomson charges $1.25 for a hardware codec. (The MP3 licensing page also contains rates for the MP3PRO format, an even more compressed version of MP3 that has since fallen out of favor.)

Interested parties should contact Thomson directly to negotiate royalty rates, the Thomson spokeswoman said.

Royalty rates will help decide if hardware manufacturers sign on to use the new format. At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, Fraunhofer IIS announced MPEG Surround, a surround-sound implementation of the MP3 format. Thomson did not announce that any companies had supported the codec.

I have not read, or listened to this, but the market is fickle. The best or highest quality product does not always win the format war. If it did, Beta would have crushed VHS, leaving that format a bad memory to everyone but the folks at JVC.

“We are launching the format publicly today, and we expect to be in a position to make further announcements regarding its adoption in the coming weeks and months,” the Thomson spokeswoman said.

The problem, according to PCMag.com audio analyst Tim Gideon, is that a hardware manufacturer must support MP3HD to catch on. “It only matters when Apple, SanDisk, Samsung, Microsoft, etc. recognize the codec,” he said. “Until then, no matter how cool it is, it’s basically a theoretically cool thing that can’t actually be used.”

During the time I was in the consumer audio business, I saw so many truly great products debuted at various shows, with most of them going nowhere. Most of the time it was a manufacturer, or manufacturers, deciding that the profit margin would not be able to be set high enough, or that it might be only a niche product, with not enough units sold to justify an assembly line being set up.

Many otherwise great ideas get left in the dust. If this is a good one, and does offer better sound without most of the drawbacks of mp3, it would be great to see it proliferate. The question will be one of money, and if the royalty fees can be folded in and made acceptable to the buying public.

§

•

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.Aldous Huxley