mp3PRO is an unmaintained proprietary audio compression

codec A codec is a computer hardware or software component that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder o ...

that combines the

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...

audio format with the

spectral band replication Spectral band replication (SBR) is a technology to enhance audio or speech codecs, especially at low bit rates and is based on harmonic redundancy in the frequency domain. It can be combined with any Audio compression (data), audio compression co ...

(SBR) compression method. At the time it was developed it could reduce the size of a

stereo Stereophonic sound, commonly shortened to stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configurat ...

MP3 by as much as 50% while maintaining the same relative quality. This works, fundamentally, by discarding the higher half of the frequency range and algorithmically replicating that information while decoding. The technology behind SBR was developed by the former Swedish company Coding Technologies AB (acquired by

Dolby Laboratories Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (Dolby Labs or simply Dolby) is a British-American technology corporation specializing in audio noise reduction, audio data compression, audio encoding/compression, spatial audio, and high-dynamic-range television (H ...

in 2007) in the late 1990s. It was included in their MPEG-2

AAC AAC may refer to: Aviation * Advanced Aircraft, a company from Carlsbad, California * Airborne aircraft carrier, a type of aircraft * Alaskan Air Command, a radar network * American Aeronautical Corporation, a company from Port Washington, New ...

derived codec aacPlus, which would later be standardized as MPEG-4

HE-AAC High-Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding (HE-AAC) is an audio coding format for lossy data compression of digital audio as part of the MPEG-4 standards. It is an extension of Low Complexity AAC (AAC-LC) optimized for low- bitrate applicati ...

. Thomson Multimedia (now

Technicolor SA Vantiva SA (formerly Technicolor SA, Thomson SARL, Thomson SA, and Thomson Multimedia) is a French multinational corporation that provides technology products and services for the communication, media and entertainment industries. Headquarter ...

) licensed the technology and used it to extend the MP3 format, for which they held patents, hoping to also extend its profitable lifetime. This was released as mp3PRO in 2001. It was originally claimed that mp3PRO files were compatible with existing MP3 decoders, and that the SBR data could simply be ignored. The reality was that MP3 players lacking specific mp3PRO decoding capability experienced a significant reduction in audio quality when playing mp3PRO files as only the lower half of the original frequency range is available. mp3PRO development has been abandoned. The format was never standardized and there is no publicly available reference source code or documentation in existence. A very old software encoder/player exists, but is not maintained. Nero's Soundtrax application, bundled in the Nero Multimedia Suite, is capable of encoding and decoding this format into several others. Some versions of the outdated MusicMatch Jukebox player (which will still run even on Windows 10 x64) were able to decode and encode this format, too. In the early 2000s, mp3PRO was usable in several portable music players and in popular music software, but its market share has deteriorated rapidly. The codec itself is largely surpassed in quality and efficiency, as well as device and application support, by modern codecs like AAC and its HE-AAC variants which employ the same SBR method.

Thomson Demo mp3PRO Player

Thomson Demo mp3PRO Player/Encoder is an unmaintained proprietary

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

media

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

program originally released by Thomson (now

) and Coding Technologies (acquired by

in 2007) which converts Waveform Audio File Format (WAV) files to mp3PRO. The official website claims that nearly 50% more music, compared to standard

, can be held by a storage device whether CD, hard drive, or flash drive. The quality of 64 kbit/s mp3PRO technology is stated to be in the range between 96 and 128 kbit/s MP3. This demo provides playback as well as compression capabilities. This specific demo program performs one WAV file to mp3PRO conversion at a time. Batch conversion is not available. Files must be 16bit PCM/WAV 44.1 kHz files. The software, as well as the mp3PRO codec, has been unmaintained for more than a decade and is generally regarded as obsolete.

External links

mp3PRO licensing information
by Technicolor SA
Download Demo mp3PRO Player/Encoder

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mp3pro Audio codecs