The Fraunhofer Institute is probably very well known around the world for his mp3 encoding standard. As it turns out, they decided to rewrite the standard in order to introduce a surround sound mp3 module. The module compresses music in about the same way that a stereo encoder does, but it manages to give true 5.1 channel sound at about the same bitrate as a stereo encoding.

At the Midem conference in Cannes, Fraunhofer has showcased a Winamp surround mp3 plug-in and that was connected to an internet radio capable of streaming surround content. The plugin is already available for download on several websites. A quick search will be of great help here. According to Fraunhofer, the new compression methods produce about the same bitrates as the old one does and it's backwards compatible with classical mp3 players.

The package that comes from Fraundhofer also includes "Esonido", a supplement to MP3 Surround decoder which allows playback of 5.1 surround sound outputting it on 2 speakers. Another module coming from Fraunhofer in the same package works exactly backwards. MP3 SX converts two-channel content into surround and is said to achieve a stable localization of vocals and instruments in the 5.1 setup. Additionally, MP3 SX adds ambient noise to the stereo input in order to produce a decent surround on the 5.1 setup.

Last week Dolby presented a similar algorithm but instead of being software based, Dolby's project was entirely built on several hardware expanders. However, the new mp3 standard could turn out to be very successful if it can stream surround mp3 at a comparable bitrate to a CD-quality stereo source.