I'm confused.... what's wrong with AC3 for multichannel audio?

Punters haven't heard of AC3.

AC3s aren't backwards compatible with MP3 hardware.

Fraunhofer IIS didn't invent AC3 so they want their own format.

Surround MP3s are smaller (but crappier).

Interersting..... but do we really want another format/codec. It's bad enough as it is with AC-3, DTS, Pro Logic 2, dolby surround, SDDS and the rest. The under the hood settings for Dolby Digital alone are enough to have given me a headache over the years.

I'm hoping that by the time the next generation of consumer storage/playback devices such as the new higher capacity DVD's are in mainstream use then everyone will be able to store and playback 24bit/96kHz/5.1 PCM files along with FMV no problem. People are now so tuned in to data reduction artifacts that it takes a pretty efficent and complex algorthym to be worth the effort... either that or forced high data rates like on DTS.

Lets face it, MP3 as a compression algorthym is pretty old hat nowadays. The only thing that could be a ray of light in this is the fact that MP3 is as close to a 'standard' format that we have and maybe this new development could do the same for the surround world... but i'd be much happier if it was something that sounded better :/ But lets look at this realistically, every DVD comes with an AC-3 soundtrack, it problably is the standard for surround at the moment so what is the point of a MP3 surround? Urgh... i just remembered, Dolby are currently releasing a new better sounding DD... talk about oversaturation.

Sorry if this is all sounding rather negative, i just don't like the way that the format wars are headed... I mean, who can predict what is going to be the most popular format in 5... or even 2 years time.

It doesn't matter much to the consumer, most of the players work with pretty much everything so they wont even notice when it selects a different codec, but for creators it's a real pain in the ass.

I don't see the market for any new surround formats just now. But in 5 years when a significant amount of music is on DVD-audio, with surround mixes, then people will want to have a small crappy surround storage medium; enter l33t surround MP3z.

Anyone downloaded the demo encoder? I don't have time to play with it right now.