![Music Software : MP3 Surround is here ! - macmusic](https://inc.440net.net/img/index.php/q/2KOdW7CsYG-0h-fb0JSarUh07Z-ooaVDo56drNnb4NDZgKKaiabv2ODMjVyoc1hznM7bi6aUb21gW6ybqpqNXLI)
Fraunhofer IIS has announced the availability of MP3 Surround Evaluation Software 1.0 for Mac OS X. MP3 Surround supports high-quality multi-channel sound at bit rates comparable to those currently used to encode stereo MP3 material, resulting in files half the size of common compressed surround formats. At the same time, the new format offers complete backward compatibility to any existing MP3 software and hardware devices. MP3 Surround was developed by Fraunhofer IIS in collaboration with Agere Systems. Using a psychoacoustic technique called binaural cue coding, MP3 Surround captures the spatial image information of multi-channel sound.
The evaluation period of the MP3 Surround encoder will expire on the 31st of December 2005.