MP3 Technology Embraced by Sonic Foundry

Sonic Foundry (Nasdaq: SOFO), a leading developer and marketer of media authoring tools for the Windows[R] platform, announced today that it will add MP3 support to its line of digital audio media software products. Rapidly growing in popularity, MP3 is an audio compression format that allows for the distribution and storage of music and audio via the Internet while allowing playback on both computers and portable players such as the Diamond Rio.

Sonic Foundry, which licensed the right to encode in the MP3 format from the Fraunhofer IIS and Thomson Multimedia, will first offer MP3 support as a plug-in for its Sound Forge[R] 4.5 media editing application as well as ACID[TM], its loop-based music creation tool.

"Incorporating MP3 encoding in our product line provides our users with numerous advantages. ACID users will now be able to encode their music creations for playback on portable players," said Rimas Buinevicius, Chairman and C.E.O. of Sonic Foundry. "And by including the MP3 format within Sound Forge, our users will now be in a position to encode their existing audio content to this highly exciting, broadly proliferated audio format."

"MP3 has become the preferred format for new and emerging artists to distribute their music on the Internet," said Kurt Ohlfs, Platform Development Manager for Diamond Multimedia's (NASDAQ: DIMD) RioPort Division. "The addition of MP3 encoding to ACID and Sound Forge now provides an easy tool for more musicians to distribute their music to friends and fans on the Internet thus building a vast community of personalized content for the Rio."

"We are very pleased to welcome an acknowledged digital audio software leader like Sonic Foundry to the growing list of companies worldwide that are supporting the MP3 standard," said Martin Sieler, Group Manager Multimedia Software of the Fraunhofer IIS. "Their incorporation of the MP3 standard within their applications promises to offer the end user a broad range of creation and editing tools."

Sound Forge is Sonic Foundry's award-winning audio media editing environment that contains a wide range of processes, tools, and effects for manipulating audio. Built from the ground up as a Windows platform product, it features DirectX plug-in compatibility and support for streaming Web audio and video productions, including support for RealNetworks (NASDAQ: RNWK) G2 and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Windows Media Technologies 4.0.

Sonic Foundry's ACID software is a powerful, yet easy-to-use royalty-free music creation tool that brings unprecedented creative flexibility to loop arranging and editing of digital audio. With a simple click and drag, users can combine and mix loops, make real-time changes to pitch and tempo, and control the volume, pan, and effect envelopes for each track to create the perfect mix. ACID then allows users to save their music creation in any number of popular file formats for easy playback and enjoyment.