Fraunhofer Institute to present MP3 Surround sound at CeBIT

The venerable MP3, has been upgraded to new heights  and it is difficult to imagine how this will impact the current marketing situation.  A next generation of MP3, the MP3 Surround technology, provides a multi-channel listening experience with minimum effort and maximum compatibility.

According to this article at Music Industry News, the user can play back both stereo or surround music from the same MP3 Surround files. This allows for a wide range of MP3 Surround applications within e.g. broadcasting systems or web-based music distribution. This seems to be something that would be of great interest to downloading services that offer the content in MP3 form. Sprinkled with some DRM dust of course (speculation).

MP3 Surround allows the reproduction of high-quality multichannel sound at bit rates comparable to those currently used to encode stereo MP3 material. Most importantly, the new format offers complete backward compatibility to existing MP3 software and devices: MP3 Surround bit streams are played back as high-quality stereo sound on all current MP3 players. When decoded by MP3 Surround decoders, however, the new format produces full 5.1 channel surround sound! These astounding features are realized by a revolutionary technical approach based on the MP3 standard: MP3 Surround technology encodes multichannel sound by transmitting a stereo audio signal that carries a compatible stereo down mix of the multi-channel material. In addition, a small amount of side information is transmitted characterizing the spatial distribution and attributes of the multi-channel sound image. MP3 Surround was developed by Fraunhofer IIS in collaboration with Agere Systems.

This would be nice to hear in person and for those lucky enough to attend CeBIT, quite possible.  Let's hope we can get some more information on MP3 surround sound. According to the article, it will be available mid year.  Seems like one heck of a concept, will other codecs soon follow?

Source: Music Industry News