http://www.thomson-multimedia.com/gb/06/c01/010614.htm

Check out the news release. It's tells about Mp3Pro, which offers 128kb performance with 64kb encoding. Sounds pretty interesting...

Thing is though that most mp3 releases are typically 192kb, so conserving space is the last thing thats on everyone's mind. But, apparently the quality of the 64kb mp3pro file is actually better than a 160kb mp3 file. Now THAT is interesting.

Dead link, yo.

Who owns the patent on this? Unless this is an open source, free audio format then its just another way for companies to get money out of people, control what music they listen to and how they listen to it.

There's always ogg format. I've found the quality to be better than mp3, and it's open source.