MP3 Audio - New and Improved?

Okay...so here is apparently the next giant leap in digital music. Compaxx claims to have developed an MP3 compression technique that preserves the audio quality, in fact enhances it! According to Compaxx -

"Compaxx post-processing utilizes sophisticated forensic audio techniques to restore and embed vital harmonic and spatial data actually resident within extant CD recordings, but currently indecipherable on even the best of today’s high-end stereo equipment."

Hmmm...interesting! But what they say they do to restore the audio quality sounds like steroids to me.

To prove their point, they have provided audio samples of CD quality MP3 (lossless rips I presume) and the corresponding Compaxx MP3 clips spanning accross various genre. I checked out their stuff using a few of their samples. The file size of both the version are almost the same. The Compaxx versions were generally a little louder at the same volume level (though they do mention that the volumes have been normalized). This could also be the reason they seemed to be a little more revealing. The spatial imaging seemed clearer in them. The bass seemed more well defined though some of the low freqs tended to sustain longer. There was some background noise in a couple of the tracks (most evident in The Nutcracker) but maybe that is the indecipherable data they are talking about ;)

Compaxx recommends the use of A 3-piece-or-better multimedia speaker set to listen to the samples. I used my Sony MDR-W014 Lightweight Sports Stereo Headphones. The tracks were played using Winamp 5.2 with flat tone settings.

The Compaxx versions do seem to be much clearer and richer in their quality though I am still a little concerned about maintaining the naturality of the recording. Their restoration and enhancement process may introduce some unnatural elements, its digital logic after all. Performance enhancing steriods! But this was not very evident in the sample tracks I checked out, only the CCR track seemed pumped up. In a nutshell, from what I experienced, it definitely seems to be an advancement on the digitally compressed audio. So finally we may get the hard core audiophiles and analog lovers in the same fold as the download-and-burn gang.

The tracks I compared with:

King Crimson - Cat's in the cradle (I didn't know that they have also covered this. Didn't sound like them either)

Floyd - Another brick 2

CCR - Fortunate Son

Vivaldi - Four Seasons, Autumn allegro

Tchaikovsky - The Nutcracker

Check them out here