fredjones

Transcoding in general is not a good idea. However, I have found that mp3s that have a good enough initial bitrate, such as 192 or higher, that the results when transcoded to atrac are in general very listenable. There will always be some loss of sound quality when doing this. You just have to decide what is good enough for you. Anyway my NW-S706F sound reproduction is so good that most stuff sounds good anyway. Even the 64kb stuff has surprised me. If I can I use the original CD to make all my atrac files, this assures the highest sound quality.

Thanks. By lame standard, I meant the preset standard which is vbr with average bit rate around 192. I think the atrac does sound better. I noted that in sonicstage when encoding there is an option for atrac and atrac lossless. Which one would be the atrac3+ you mentioned above.

I just got my shiny new player the other day. I have been experimenting with various formats. Encoding the same song in different formats. I did the same song with Atrac 256 and then Lame mp3 (standard quality). It seems that on this player that the Atrac files sound better with better separation. Has anyone else experienced something like this? Any recs on future encoding greatly appreciated.

If your cd player supports mp3 then you should be able to get many hours of them on one cd. To burn a compatable mp3 cd however can be tricky. If you just go to burn a regular audio cd with mp3s then they will be converted over to a standard audio cd and yes you will only be able to fit about 20 songs on one cd in this format. I you use the correct software ( I use Nero ) be sure to select the "mp3 cd" option. Think about it, a cd-r is around 700MB right. An mp3 file is usually 5mb or less. Do the math and you should be able to fit plenty of songs. I have not tried to use SonicStage to make an mp3 cd so I can't comment on what it would do. Maybe someone else can. Hope this helps.

Thanks a lot for the input. A little more than what I expected. The features look to be very good on this little unit. Now could anyone recommend where to purchase one of these little jewels? I live in the U.S. Unfortunately Sony is not well represented at many of the main electronics outlets when it comes to their small players such as these.

I am considering getting one of the new NW-S600/700 model MP3 players. One appealing feature is the ability to record with a line in format ATRAC or even up to linear PCM 1411. Are these recordings just stuck on the recorder or can they actually be uploaded onto the computer? Much thanks for input.