mp3HD has arrived

Posted by Joel Eaton on Thursday 26 March 2009 at 12:45pm
Tags: compression | file formats |

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Thomson, who licence the mp3 patent, have announced the arrival of a new lossless format: mp3HD. The new format allows mathematically lossless compression of audio material while preserving backward compatibility to the mp3 standard, becoming a hybrid lossless/lossy format.

Evaluation software has just been released (testing is imminent here), to convert 44.1KHz 16-bit wav files - though it's a shame testing can't done be done on higher spec files and is currently limited to Windows or Linux machines, but let's hope that won't last too long.

Whether mp3HD proves as efficient as other lossless formats such as FLAC remains to be seen, but in the current climate, a hybrid format such as this could prove popular for people using different libraries, i.e. one on a home PC and on a portable device, without the switch to a whole new format.

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