The Rio Division of S3 has announced it will license Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) technology from Dolby Laboratories for use in its third-generation Rio digital audio players. AAC is an audio format standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) by companies including AT&T, Dolby Laboratories, Fraunhofer IIS, and Sony and is part of the MPEG-2 specification of the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) . According to an ISO-funded study, music encoded in AAC was found to be indistinguishable from the CD original. When compared to MP3 (MPEG 1 Layer-3) encoded music, AAC was found to provide improved audio quality (AAC at 96 kilobits per second is better than MP3 at 128 kilobits per second) while requiring approximately 30% less storage and/or bandwidth (decoding time). AAC supports Dolby 5.1 and provides support for up to 48 audio channels, 15 low frequency enhancement channels, 15 embedded data streams and has multi-language capability. AAC is also compatible with all digital rights management, encryption, and watermarking solutions, which may account for its popularity within the recording industry.

Will AAC be the new darling of the recording industry? Will MP3 be replaced by AAC anytime soon? Were not holding our breath!