Audiophiles dissatisfied with the sound quality of the MP3 format may have had some reason for hope lately, what with recent rumblings from consumer electronics giant Thompson Multi Media about an improved version of the format called MP3 Pro.

     Demonstrated in beta form at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, MP3 Pro is being developed by Thompson and digital codec specialists, Coding Technologies. The eventual goal of the effort is to license the technology to other manufacturers and developers.

     While a beta version of the encoder/decoder software is available from www.thomson-multimedia.com, the company recently pushed back the launch of its new line of MP3 Pro compatible portable audio players to early 2002.

     The major gain made with MP3 Pro is efficiency. According to Thompson's website: "Using advanced psychoacoustics techniques and music structure analysis, mp3PRO creates files that are more compact than original mp3 files, with equal or better sound quality and complete backwards and forwards compatibility. Your old mp3 files will play completely normally on a new mp3PRO player. New mp3Pro files will play normally on old mp3 players, but without the dramatic mp3Pro improvements."

     Thompson claims 128 Kb/s performance at only 64 Kb/s, in effect doubling the storage capacity of an MP3 Pro compatible device. As a result, the codec is being designed to support bit rates up to 96 Kb/s only, making it clear that the final goal here is quantity not quality. Indeed, when the company's official line is that 64 K/bs is "near CD quality" why bother going any further? Would this format rival the sound quality of a CD if used at a 320 Kb/s data rate? We may never know.

For more background on the MP3 codec and sound quality have a look HERE.

Aaron Marshall