New MP3 format halves size of music files

By Anand Parthasarathy

KOCHI JUNE 18. Fans who use the popular MP3 format to make compressed digital versions of their favourite music can now store twice the number of tracks of the same audio quality on the same compact disc. A new format - called MP3PRO - released last week by the German originators, Fraunhofer Institute, and its commercial partner, Thomson Multimedia, further shrinks the size of music files by encoding the high and low notes separately.

Later this week, a number of web-based music sites can be expected to provide a downloadable version of the new MP3 player, allowing users to not only play their music in the improved format, but to `rip' or convert conventionally recorded music in the `WAV' format to MP3PRO versions.

MP3 - or Motion Picture Expert Group Layer 3 - is a standard for compressing audio tracks that was promulgated by the International Standards Organisation (ISO) in the early 1990s and based on research undertaken in the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits in Bavaria, Germany. While lay users get to use the standard free, companies making MP3 players are required to pay a small royalty to Fraunhofer. In spite of this, MP3 has become the defacto standard for digitised music downloaded from the Internet.

Users of Napster-type web resources to download music in the MP3 format find that an average Indian track of 4 to 6 minutes can be saved in 5 MB disk space. Shorter Western pop music tracks can be fitted in 1-2 MB. The optimum recording rate is 128 kilobits a second, below which the sound is distorted. The new PRO version is expected to allow recording at lower rates like 64 KBPS while still maintaining CD quality. Lower bit rates will mean squeezing more MP3 files on a CD - perhaps as many as 100-150 compared to around 20 tracks customarily found on music CDs sold here.

Rival offering

Meanwhile, MP3 itself is facing competition. A rival format promising to do everything that MP3 does - without the royalty requirement - is now being offered on the web. It carries the bizarre name of `Ogg Vorbis' and was created by a team of independent developers, touting `open source' music compression software. The software was hitherto available in advanced beta versions for free download and its Version 1.0 was released today at www.xiph.org/ogg.

Major software companies such as Microsoft have been pushing their own proprietary music encoding standards. But customer pressure has forced them to include an MP3 option in their products. Microsoft's Windows operating system includes a Media Player that converts files into its own Windows Media Audio (WMA) format; but MP3 files can also be played. However, there are fears that when the new version, Windows XP, is launched in October, the MP3 format may no longer be supported. To fuel these doubts, Microsoft has removed MP3 decoders from some of the trial or beta versions of Windows XP already released to developers.

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