MP3 Goes 5.1

[techz]

- Fraunhofer has released its new MP3 Surround codec, allowing full 5.1 audio to be easily compressed and downloaded. And to encourage use of the new format, free encoders are being made available until the end of the year.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1747426,00.asp?kc=PCMS102049TX1K0100488

http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/amm/download/mp3surround/downloadpage.html

[MSlv]

cool! No more 250+mb ac3 streams then! 5.1 for 1cd DVDrips...

[techz]

wonder if gknot/autogk can use it, at least for a year ;)

[bond]

1) the mpeg-2 standard defines multichannel .mp3 for years already! its just that noone every wrote a decoder/encoder for it

2) the fhg extension is not defined in mpeg and is not multichannel (its "surround"), but stereo with some extra info that tells the decoder how to upmix during playback

3) :search:
this has been discussed already here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=86159) and here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=81602)

moved to audio forum

[neo_anderson]

so, is there any way right now to convert ac3 to 5.1 mp3?

[Brother John]

Originally posted by neo_anderson
so, is there any way right now to convert ac3 to 5.1 mp3?
Fraunhofer has released a reference codec (read the other threads), but don’t be too excited about multichannel MP3. Why not?
Like bond said it’s not really 6 discrete channels, meaning you’ll never get the experience of e.g. a 5.1 AC3. Multichannel mp3 is much more a Dolby Pro Logic kind of thing.
Bitrates for decent quality will never beat more modern formats like AAC. Nero’s encoder for example can produce nice quality at as low as 128 kbit/s – and that’s for a track with 5.1 full channels.
Currently no standalone player can decode multichannel mp3. If you play such a file on your standalone, you will get stereo output. Imo that situation won’t change shortly, if at all.
Currently the only way to produce/playback multichannel mp3 is Fraunhofer’s impementation.