Ah... Well then it sounds like they're kinda powerless. None of the respectable and widely-used encoders use the Fraunhofer reference implementation anyway. So if anything, Fraunhofer is doing us a favor by getting rid of inferior encoders. I've been "plugged in" to the mp3 scene for many years now and had never heard of 8Hz so something tells me this isn't a huge blow to the mp3 format.

-Tony
MkII #554