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Thomson Releases MP3 Surround
Anonymous Howard writes "Thomson has released MP3 Surround, a new MP3 codec. They claim that MP3 Surround supports high-quality multi-channel sound at bit rates comparable to those currently used to encode stereo MP3 material, resulting in files half the size of common compressed surround formats while maintaining backwards compatibility. Wasn't MP3 Pro supposed to be a great new MP3 codec, but never took off? I wonder if this is going to go the same route. Does anyone have a technical view of MP3 Surround? Does it have potential?"
It won't replace current mp3s. It will only be a method of compressing 5.1 channel surround sound files. It will only be useful for ripping DVD audio, or attaching it to DVD movies that have been compressed with divx or something.
"If it sucks without butter, it still sucks with butter, only creamier." - AC
I've ripped a few music/concert DVD-Videos, downmixed to 2-channel Dolby Pro Logic--same thing you get on a 'surround sound' TV program--then encoded as MP3 and saved it in my collection. It works well enough for me. (A program called HeadAC3he will do it. Google it.) It's not real surround sound, but it sounds pretty decent on a surround sound setup. Also sounds cool on headphones.
I have no need for a special codec whose special features aren't supported by any of my hardware or software.
Typically the video is re-encoded and stereo audio gets turned into mp3 or ogg.
If the audio track is multichannel, it is usually just preserved in the original encoding. AC3 (Dolby Digital) is usually either 384Kbps or 448Kbps on the DVD and DTS is usually 768Kbps with the rare 1.5Mbps track.
Ogg vorbis does have provision for multichannel sound, up to (I think) 255 channels. I have not looked for over a year, but none of the encoders or decoders supported more than 2-channel ogg back then.
Usually a game sound is mono, and the sound engine renders it's position using some 3d sound API. Except for a cutscene, you'd never use a surround encoded sound.
While you could "cheat" using this and have, say, 16 mp3s of a gunshot from 16 radials around the listener, I still don't see it as being that helpful.
The point is to recover high frequencies stripped of by low bit rate (64kbps) MP3 encoding, based on existing low frequencies and some hints on what is missing. The result is that you can listen to music radio over a 56K line. It's not great, but it will not hurt your ears. Musicmatch radio took a good advantage of this format.
But at higher bit rate high frequences are already encoded and do not have to be recovered. Given that you are not going to encode surround sound at 64kbps, MP3Pro and MP3 surround will never be used together.