The MP3, as you know, is the standard file format found on pretty much every portable digital music player in the world. Even if you use another format predominantly, such as Apple’s preferred AAC files, your iPod will still play MP3s. But in general, audiophiles don’t like MP3s. Why? They’re lossy. That means that there’s a lot of digital information that gets tossed out when you put a CD in your computer‘s drive and rip it to MP3 files.

This comes in handy when you want to say your music player will hold 35,000 songs, but these players are getting larger and can handle more information. Yesterday on Ars Technica, John Timmer posted about a new digital audio file created by Thomson, the MP3HD, that may allow you to take better advantage of that great big music player you carry in your pocket. Thomson was one of the companies behind the original MP3, and has been working on this new format for a while.