JustAnUnCoolCat

Well, from what i can see... You simply have one simple option. Since the A series takes it's external charge/power via the docking connector (and hence it's USB transfer cable), then it's really a case of butchering a spare USB cable of the right type (aka the type supplied). At a rough guess, and it is totally untested.. just relying on experience here and hopefully that the deck is not too voltage sensitive, since it's native external DC charge/power source is 5V DC, it could potentially charge from a 4.8V-6V DC supply. 4.8V - 6V DC range also, suprise suprise, emcompasses the supply voltage arrangement of 4x AA/C/D cells (4.8V for 4x ni-mh, through 6V for 4x alkalines) - you get a higher discharge current off ni-cad/ni-mh which is (in the most simplistic terms) why 6V specced kit can often be powered by 4.8V of DC with a suffiiciently high current available. So given you manage to isolate/determine which of the pins and associated wires in a butchered cable carries the postive and negative power connections - you could bring the cut end (aka the formerly standard USB connector end) of the cable into a 4-cell battery holder and connect postive and negative as normal to the two output terminals of the holder. At a cost of some bulk, a 4x D Cell holder (using alkalines) could potentially give you the means to progressively charge the internal cell pack on-the-go, or overnight. An AA cell pack is the slim option. Given the size of a 4xAA holder, about the size of a pack of cigarettes (slightly slimmer actually), a case about the size of a pack of 20 cigarette pack could hold the AA holder inside and still (at a push) leave room for a connector on the pack (a simple two connection type like a 2.5mm or 3.5mm plug/socket combo will do) allowing you to add the appropriate connector to the cable so it's unpluggable both ends, and then all you gotta figure out is waterproofing/dampproofing the battery case. Got no ideas re supply and charge time as i don't have any consumption figures for the A series nor it's charge rate - but hey, go do a little research and all should become clear Be Cool Always 'Tom Kat'

In case it's of any interest to anyone, I intend to this week, post a request to Sony to the effect of requesting they supply a formal list of :- 1) The part ref for each of the sets of bundled phones that come with the different models of Sony decks. 2) The tech specs of those phones and their specific equivilents in the retail packaged range of aftermarket Sony phones. It just seemed to me that whilst in some cases, and less now that it used to be, it's easy to estimate or draw an idea of phones equiv between a bundled example and it's nearest or exact retail model. But in lots of cases, especially since minor details (minor, but important) things like the response range etc of the OEM units do not get published and this kinda makes it hard to decide whether other prospective replacements from the retail range will improve upon or better match your listening desires/needs. Personally, i really aint fussed if the request draws a blank or not - but i'd feel sure that having some kinda of comparision quick-ref of what equals what of OEM vs Retail phone models would benefit someone or even many. Think of that, if the request pans out, as a pinned item - a newcomer could take a peek.. and if they see that a deck they want comes with (quoting retail models here) E808 or E818 equivs and they already know that neither of those will suit their needs, then they have an advance notice to factor in an extra spend to get phones they know will suit their needs (from recommendation, or simply knowing known good alternatives). Feel free to comment, will be mailing the request Fri night, so any feedback or suggestions as to how to expand on the idea is useful.. not essential, but if some feedback can help to make the potential list more useful.. then by all means feed the feedback by the bucketload. PM, or reply to the topic as suits.., and donations of virtual premium kit-e-kat for me avatar's ferocious appetite is always appreciated Be Cool Always 'Tom Kat'

It's always nice to see the SP restrictor being able to be disabled. Did the SP adjust to my eval NWA-3000, not because i wanted the SP off.. but purely in case i happen to want to use some of my phones collection that heavily restricted players cannot drive properly. And in truth, the sane amongst us only lift the SP restriction to unlock the restrictor for similar purposes (i.e. necessity) and also if you do work/exist in a noisy environment when listening to your deck, losing the SP restrictor and using a SANE level within the new range is also quite a good sane reason to derestrict. Unfortunately, i tend to find amongst people i come across in life (*sighs*) that their main interests are :- 1) Having a deck that's louder than their mates/brothers/sisters/*insert other irrelevent relationship here* deck. 2) Making so much noise (the combination of excessive vol setting, seriously overpeaked audio source, hideous noise leakage from cheap crappy 'buds') that the only way you can hear your own music (if using non high-attentuating isolating phones/buds) is to ramp up the vol on yours. Sadly, it seems to the masses in the world that those those things count for more than preserving your hearing and socially giving a damn about your impact on those around you. I guess we can hold some consolation, and hence retain some sanity, by remembering that even such a simple and idiot proof keying combo as is this and other Sony device SP restrict, is still way too hard for the masses to be bothered to endure. Dunno about the rest of you, but around my way, i wouldn't trust the average DAP/Walkman/discman 'louder than thou' refugee to master light switches..., let alone unlock their decks Time i guess, to plug in the 5.1 cans, via the 2-channel adaptor (making the phones become a stereo pair of 4 driver phones), into the A3000 and see how it handles driving them. I know the combo of those + an NH1 worked well after SP res was lifted, so there is much hope in the wings... Whilst the Medusa 5.1 analogues may not be 'audiophile' cans in the eyes of 'audiophiles', they are pretty damn good testbeds for such things as they do need an increased level on the input (the 4 drivers on each channel is much higher a resist load than the average single driver in a channel on ordinary cans) - before lifting the SP res, this means normally running the level on the high side of normally comfortable and sane (the level equiv, if applied to 'buds' = kiss goodbye to thy hearing at worst, hello migrane at best). But hey, when you do choose to run indoor cans on a portable, you gotta anticipate some probs - but as time has proven... a good clean input from source, sufficient clean level, and good sensitivity and driver efficieny makes for a happy cat and a cheshire cat grin. *purrs contently, anticipating hearing the acoustic bass line of his fav blues and jazz tracks coming through nicely via the woofers and subs of the medusa's* 'Tom Kat'

All i know is, such a method (tax on the equipment) has sucessfully worked in one market sector - aka Digital Camcorders. If you check a breakdown of prices of digi-camcorders, the ones that allow you to upload/playback only over the Firewire connection (aka DV-OUT capable) aint had an additional levy put on them at source. However, DV-IN/DV-OUT equipped kit (the expensive stuff) which allows you to also use the the camcorders as cloning decks and quite a few other variantions of use of bi-directional DV connection use, have a levy added at source. If you note prices, you'll find that typically DV-in/DV-out capable units are almost double the price of DV-OUT units. If you compare that to lesser vs more technical analog or even Digital-8 units, the diff in price is substantially less since (and it's my speculation) those 'lesser' units dont allow for RAW or lossless recording/video encoding and hence 'dups' and recordings subsequently take from recordings are deteriorated. So if they want to make it work, 'tax on equipment', they can make it work..., particularly in a region where digital and micro-electronic gadgets are kinda big time sellers to the nth degree. On the reverse side, the alternative 'tax the media' (like they did with recordable cassettes, video and audio) approach that could be translated (in music download/publishing terms) as comparable to 'taxing the content' simply is not likely to work too well, a limited result at best. It certainly didn't (in the UK anyway) work, taxing the recording media, when it got introduced here - that said, it was too little and too late really as this was the time when CD was becoming accessible and for some this meant they could eventually ween themselves off their home-recorded copies of their highly (in portable terms) vinyl and proper tape collection. This was, in case anyone wonders, the transisitional time around the late popular walkman days and the early Discman days in the mid/late 80's. People still bought cassette blanks en-mass, regardless, where they were still using mag media (and VCR's became the main focus of where bulk cheap recording media was wanted more) - the only thing that really changed was that, in audio cassette terms, was the days of popping into your big name high-street outlet and buying TDK D and AD range cassettes at the old prices of bugger all for twenty (which when you do the figures, it was not unusual to see at sale times, that people would come in with a large cardboard shipping box and literally buy and fill it with off-the-shelf bulk packs of TDK's). All that happened was, that largest bulk individual pack size came down to say max pack sizes of 10 cassettes and a price hike to boot. And a few brands also dissapeared off the shelf.. Whether the logic of taxing the kit is any better than taxing the media or content distrib, is something i guess we could argue til the cows come home (and for sure, i bet many meeting hours in the various businesses with interest, have burnt up some serious midnight and midday oil over this stuff). It'll be resolved by the 'vote with the feet' outcome i suspect, and that will kill or prove the logic of what is implemented in the end.

Well, i can't say i've hit an instance yet where high BR encoded MP3's has caused any kinda grief. Admittedly, my few thousand mp3's are FHG/CT encoder generated (aka they were encoded by the late encoder variant that is used for MP3PRO and MP3 and CBR/VBR capable), and as for Lame and Xing and Blade generated stuff.. never tried with those. MP3PRO (played as legacy) Q100 VBR's (basically playing back as 32-320K spread VBR encodings but the SBR data is ignored in legacy playback - high quality setting) have played back fine here for me on both the D-NE models i prev mentioned have used/owned... *makes mental note to dig out the NE20 as it kinda fell into disuse after getting an Hi-MD unit* Likewise CT/FHG encoder generated Q100 VBR's ( equiv to a 32-320K spread VBR encoding setting with 'high' setting to process intensity) panned out nicely and decoded nicely - no sign of any 'choking' on files the decks couldn't handle. In fact, it's only ever been dodgy media related issues (easy to solve) and the prev mentioned 'nervous kitten' tolerence of ultra-speed RW's that were shadows on what i found to be a sunshine bright series of multi-codec decks.

D-NE1 & D-NE20 both have optical out. D-NE20 uses the combined socket method (aka the optical link is inside the 3.5mm analog socket, so you use one socket for both.. what you feed depends on what you have connected). I think, and it's relying on a most dodgy aged virtual cat spirit memory here that's more and more falliable these days, the NE-1 had each on a separate output. Liked both, got an example of each - i dont have SCMS issues, using the optical out... , then again, my EU models also lack the audo limiters...., and for that..., well i was suprised about. I dont use the optical outs myself (only discovered the lack of SCMS intervention the one time i accidently plugged the optical lead into my MD unit, expecting to get audio from the DAB set on the stack, and inadvertently getting compressed audio playback from the D-NE20 when i had it on a soak test to get a more real world idea of indoor battery-use endurance. Never repeated the instance, so cannot comment on use subsequent to the accidental mistake). It's still a mystery to this day why the optical lead got connected to the NE-20 as it goes, cannot for the life of me figure out why..??

Someone mentioned, in reply, in a topic relating to the Connect software (which seems to be the only real 'arrrgggh' factor to the new NW series decks), about 'fit for purpose'. Sadly, here in the UK and also in many parts of the world, it's an absolute pain in the a** to go try to fight a claim over 'unfit for purpose' reasoning on ancillary software such as Connect. Whilst i would ordinarily plead to the sane that honesty is the best policy, and not to go faking 'hardware fault' simply to offload the whole package back on the source/retailer, i can sympathise with the people who do invent an obscure hard-to-pin-down 'baffle the peeps at customer services' fault to help speed up the refund issue or exchange for something else. I say that, because i have had to fight over 'dodgy software' issues before with manufacturers (when i worked in tech support for a retailer), and it came down to either a long-drawn out back-n-forth argument or simply handle each case on a personal judgement call. I used to treat it as : 1) If the software supplied was essential to the proper loading/functioning of the player, then yes.. perfectly sane grounds to demand a refund/exchange as the essential software should be 100% stable for a non-techy end user's purposes, and if there had been no intermediate fix release, they got a guaranteed refund advisory sent to the boss from myself to resolve the prob. 2) If the software itself was not essential to proper non-techy end user operation, i'd suggest a functional alternative (of equal non-techy end user suitability) that was freely available (and also give full how-to instructions on how to use with the player in question) and see where it went from there (if they had made the claim early enough, since we were distance sellers, they had enough time to see if the alt method worked, and still be able to resolve one way or the other). 3) On the basis of 2), and the only other third-party product around that could do the job was gonna be at cost to the customer, i'd try to work out a deal where we could subsidise their purchase (so not a refund, but not a refusal either). Needless to say, options 1 and 3 were never overly popular with the bosses and opt 2 was highly popular as a long as i didn't spend too long researching and producing the alt software how-to's. So in a way, i ended favouring doing what was right, and ferk the boss.. At the end of the day, sadly, unless the dodgy state of the software renders the product totally unusable and hence the hardware product is no more than a dumb pile of components (for average day to day use) without a stable example of the supplied software, it gets real complicated trying to argue 'not fit for purpose' in a legal sense. Sometimes, ignorance can be blissful and sometimes, a small white lie is the only way to go, when you want out of the bad situation. Thank god, some might say, that SS still allows the Connect Player supplied decks to be usable, else this would be a really dire situation. Ok, i can see (despite not being a CP user) that SS is not a 100% replacement but for those using ATRAC as their preferred portable audio format, it is a working solution that you aint having to go play silly buggers with dodgy ripped-off software to achieve. True, some might say (with good reason) that SS is a bit dodgy in places itself, but hey.. if you use Windows, you are familar with the concept of 'not 100% stable' anyway and odd quirks ... Definately not a fan of companies who covertly use end-users (paying end-users, ferk the bloody journos and other blaggers who make claims and make hell on the basis of non-purchased products they received on a good-will basis for eval) as unpaid beta testers, particularly when the fact they purchased the product makes them paying beta testers (in the sense of, they are paying for the priv of beta testing the bloody software). Would i work for a manufacturer of such goods again, or even work in the retail support side...?? Like ferk would i, would rather be doing mine clearance or bomb disposal

Ah.. so there is at least one person here who remembers 'that darn cat' (as some people used to 'politely' refer to me as) Well, that's fair enough if you dont really need the WMA/OGG/ASF support, that mostly removes the codec support differences into irrelevency. So really, for mp3, it's really down to MPEG 1 Layer 3 and MPEG II Layer 3 playback that is definately there (that said, i only used 22/24/44/48Khz where applicable on those mp3 encodings). I cannot recall (not having the manuals to either D-NE models possesed to hand) exactly what the supported sample frequencies are for the D-NE series - but 22Khz/24Khz MP3 and MP3Pro in legacy mode is read fine and decoding cleanly. In fact, when it comes to mp3 playback (be it mp3 or mp3pro in legacy) I swear it sounds cleaner and less muddy than i remember on the iMP-250 and iMP-550 (and other iRiver decks) through cans/phones. Regarding WMA's.. Well, if you do want to use your existing WMA's, a quick win solution to getting them usable is to import them into SonicStage and convert to ATRAC3/ATRAC3Plus as you prefer. For simplicity sake, whatever you used for WMA encoding bit-rate wise, use the nearest bit-rate in ATRAC3/ATRAC3Plus and that's likely to give you a pretty good approximation. In a lot of ways, 105/132K ATRAC3 is a pretty good WMA 96K/128K substitute that is supported, on the D-NE series, so unless the results (which you can preview in SS before burning to data CD) really do fall short of expectations (in which case, transcode to higher rates), that's your quick win for WMA's you have that you cannot produce to ATRAC direct from non-lossy source. Personally, since WMA LSL's can be imported and converted, I favour using WMA9LSL as the catch-all lossless encoding for archiving when working with keeping archives to lossy encode from for multiple decks outside of Sony units. Where you have all original media to work from, then archive for fast conversion, using ATRAC Lossless instead. Anti-skip .. Again, i guess it was a case of some of us being unlucky and lucky. I never found anyone else with an iMP-250 who got the totally bombproofness i got re anti-shock (because they used crap media, maybe, maybe i just got one deck that was sh*t hot in tolerences.. dunno), but i do know that the 350 was also pretty damn good, the 150 (which i believe was that cut-down 250 variant hybrid of two models thingy) not so good as also went with the 550. Sure, like all decks, the D-NE's do hiccup on bad media - but they really only give totally bad tolerence on really damaged discs in my experience (and some ultra-speed RW's). Essentially, if the disc is hard to read on a CD/DVD-ROM drive on a PC, then you can expect a prob or two with D-NE's reading them. Battery :- Well, i do kinda miss the D-NE1's mega running time when i use the D-NE20 (about 50% of nominally), so i can see where you find the the D-NE005 lacking in that department. The Hum :- Between the use of my most hated 'buds' (the EX71's, which only get pulled out for rare testing, since i find them migrane inducing), E818's or MX200's being the 'buds' i would favour since i have multple pairs (convenience not choice), the V300's and the Medusa's and the EH-2200's, i cannot say i have experienced a hum come through on either of the older D-NE models. Budget models :- I think it's pretty safe to say that you really aint wanting a budget built-down model - if the 005 and the 150 (Sony and iRiver respectively) both lacked the finess you want. I'm not anti-budget models, but i have noticed over time that it's often better to wait for top-end models to come on special promos or opening cut-prices and go for broke with them, then buy a cheapy budget model. The exception to that philsophy, in my case, is when i know that the guts of a cheapie is identical (and hence consistency will go common to cheapy and pricey models). Backlight :- As best i recall, it's a choice of 'on' at a touch of a button (with an eventual shutoff) or an always off mode (that's part of how they get the battery endurance.., and how i got the mega endurance on the D-NE1, since i can often pick out display detail in low ambient light). FF/RW Speed :- Never actually measured the speed, but it does appear the apparent 4x scan speed would be the limit.

Ok... In short, the answer is 'no' and 'yes'. At the pure mp3 encoding level, the Lame encoder generates standard mp3's just like the FhG MP3 encoder in WMP10, the FhG MP3 encoders used in some other commercial ripper/converters, and for goes for the Xing and CT/FhG and Blade sourced encoders. So on the most basic 'compatibility/compliancy' level, there is no essential diff between the mp3 encoders. Some have better implementations of the encoding engine (aka tweaked/variants/clean open builds), some stick pretty tightly to the FhG model which is pretty much the ISO MP3 standard (hence why FhG encoders still have a value to those of us who dont actually encode with it, for reference at the very least). Xing was a commericial variant (i forget if it was a licensed one, or a clean build of the ISO model framework) that did some bits such as formally offering VBR encoding which the early FhG one did not (at one point, and again i forget when, VBR was included in the earlier FhG encoders but was 'not implemented' as far as general use was concerned). Blade is a CBR encoding mode exclusive MP3 encoder which was a solution someone came up with to produce CBR encodings that lacked the roughness of the stock (then quite early) FhG item and was also free (but never commercially sellable, not that the author intended to profit from it, due to potential patent issues). Lame was simply another open clean build encoder (i dont recall if the earliest release was, but has been pretty much as clean build as it gets, in the last few years or so at least), not destined for profit, and has progressively benefited from the intensive optimisation and rebuilding process. I wont go into 'which is best', as for the same reason i decided to avoid such speculation over codecs and 'bestness', but it's generally considered that for a do-all mp3 encoder, then Lame tends to be the choice of most, even if just for it's free availability. Lame is also under two parallel rebuilds, with the current 3.98 version under public test/development, in it's 4.xx form (very very fast, single-threaded encoder version) but currently really only an in-principle dev model as most portable decks haven't been able to read the outputed mp3's properly (that said, however, things may have progressed since i last messed with 4.xx). It's second form, a forked project in fact, is the LameMT project. This currently based on the 3.97 single-threaded encoder, but the MT version (currently only in .exe form) is a multi-threaded prototype variant that is considerably faster than say 3.96 or 3.97 single thread version (tested using AMD64), but when i used it on a Duron 800, there was (in single threaded mode) a encoding speed boost (marginal, but i was doing ultra HQ encoding at the time, so any slight improvement is a bonus in such situations). In fact, if anyone here has used MusicMatch Jukebox and it's 'convert files' option and converted WAV's to HQ VBR and CBR MP3 and MP3PRO files (which for argument sake, is around the region of Alt Preset Standard Lame kinda quality or there abouts perceptibly), then they will find that 3.97 MT in moderate quality encodings (aka -b 32 -B 320 -v 0 -q -0 -h --nores --mt, for multi-threaded use) and 3.98 Alpha (-b 32 -B 320 -v 0 -q -0 -h), was encoding at approximately the same speed and it's well known that MMJB's CT/FHG sourced encoder is no slow coach by a long way.. more like a cat with a scaled tail...) *cringes at the analogy* So in short, whether Lame is any different in the outputed mp3's (perception wise of the quality/consistency of the audio) over the CT/FHG item that WMP10 uses, is pretty much up to you to figure out. I'll just say that, in practise, i'll use an FhG/CT sourced encoder as readily as i will use Lame, just depends on what's installed on a machine at a given time. There is benefit to using Lame over other mp3 encoders, but sometimes the effort (and overhead on the encoding in HQ on current release versions) entailed for the moderate increase in output quality can be tentatively called 'a case of decreasing gains, for more effort'. So the best thing to do is try encoding with Lame (just download the .exe release of 3.96 or 3.97 and encode some ripped WAV's) to comparable levels to the settings you use with WMP10, and back-to-back them... On a lot of playback kit, considering a lot of speakers and amps (multimedia stuff) are not really clean enough to be reliable for assesing via, i suggest maybe burning the decodes of the resulting mp3's to an Audio CD and play them via a decent CD player on a good hifi, so taking all the PC audio parts x factors out of the equation. If you find benefit of worth (considering the minimual to high extra encoding time, depending on your HQ settings using Lame), then that pretty much answers the perceptual audio half of the 'is Lame different' generic question. But as far as .. does it generate alternative form or non-standard mp3's, the general answer is 'no'. The only exception there is one switch on Lame ( --freeformat ) which does generate files which are totally unusable in most portable and most common software players (high quality and high-tech software players such as WinAMP and some open-source players, can play --freeformat encoded files without prob). Please excuse me if my timeline/history is a little vague or incomplete over those, been in this game way too long.. and it's about time i gave the old grey matter some time off *amendment* I'm also a bit of a mp3 maverick, in the sense whilst i do HQ encoding, when it come to most day-to-day mp3 encodings, i stick to practical outcome encodings, and since MMJB's CT/FHG item works effectively enough for me (not the hottest encoding quality out there, but way up on the old FhG and all but the most recent Lame variants), it tends to be my encoder of choice for generating files that get used for disco use or for playback on DVD units. I have moved to using LameMT for encoding for personal portable use and for HQ non-portable mp3's, but that said, i tend to use ATRAC much more for portable used now and WMA for DVD player usage (since my DVD decks support it).

Let's be totally bloody blunt, honest and live in the real world now... It matters not a bean who has 'scientifically' determined a particular codec is better/worse/equally of worth than a.n.other codec out there (in common use, or niche use). That kind of 'paper' results is a bit like the stuff that gets published from 'independently' testing that demonstrates the superiority of niche tweaked/reworked engines etc that manufacturers of cars and motorcycles use to justify their claims (after commissioning the independent report/testing, of course) and so give potential customers further promise since the claims are backed up by independent testing evidence. The only difference between those commissioned testing processes and purely academic 'test and research for science sake' equivs, is the motivation and the money source. On paper, they both have equal nil value to the end user unless the end user is a bit a of a techy obssessive who either needs such research results to contribute to/back up their own academic findings or simply wants to prove a point. In the real world, aka where 'Joe Bloggs' spends nil (by using 'obtained' encoders) or little (using paid for encoders) or used bundled propriety encoding technology (like ATRAC would fit into) - the only things that matter are :- a) Can i take a source (any source) and get a workable reproduction using the codec i wish to use.?? If i have a choice, which works best, and if i get varying results, can i effectively mix and match the use of the various options available (that come up to scratch)..?? c) If i have to transcode, because my sources are lossy or 'analog-loop' sourced non-lossless audio, from which codec (and encoding combo) gives me the best results that work within my ATRAC destination encoding combination - and more importantly, which ones are actually supported for import/transcode and conversion by my ATRAC software. All of those are way more important, to the real world user, that 'which is best' persistent/repetitive/total BS arguments and proof of evidence (of which there is always a bias involved) of which is a superior codec. 'MP3 Sucks' -------------- Now that's a pretty damn similar poor mentality to that of the mp3 users who say the same about ATRAC. Apart from the fact the comment has no grounds worthy of it being noted (since it's a knee-jerk 'i hate' comment that the poster sees fit not to enlighten us on the whys and hows of that opinion being formed), it's also pretty damn useless in any context. MP3 is a good codec, within it's limitations. This is as valid as the fact that early ATRAC was not so bad as some would say it was. In both cases, MP3 and ATRAC codecs have envolved in ways, but we are talking tweaking in the case of mp3 (by means of the encoders not the codec) and tweak/optmisation that came through the evolution of ATRAC from a pretty hardware-destinated codec into the painful evolution to an 'internet audio' codec without losing it's ability to be a very end-user codec and still meet low-capacity file demands too. ATRAC users, the ones who knee-jerk, often say mp3 sucks because of it's artifacts, but most often, because mp3 sounds 'dull' by comparision. Well, guess what...., mp3 sounds dull compared to WMA, also .. if you forget to make use of the '-k' switch on the mp3 encoder for making test mp3 files for comparison. ATRAC and WMA, when we talk about moderate quality encodings (gettting them as compact as possible without being insanely sacrificial of quality) do sound a bit overly bright compared to mp3. Of that there is little doubt (when you listen after slinging away the sh*tty supplied phones that come with most kit). This is because, most mp3 encodings are very heavily filtered and unless you compare encodings with comparable tonal filtering employed, you aint even getting close to being fair. So next time you chose to compare mp3, to something else, or anything to anything encoding wise, get off yer backside.. and make sure that compression quick-wins like the excessive filtering of mp3 is killed off first (by the use of -k in the lame encoder exe). And given a bit of paws-dirty effect, set the finer filtering limits to ensure an audibly level playing field first, then compare results. Ok, you may still get the same impression after - but at least on a level playing field approach, you get a same impression that is still resulting based on a fair assessment or an unfair assessment. Best Codec -------------- Aint gonna go down that road, as often there can be as many outcomes as there are different combinations of encoders (direct r/t and non-r/t) and codecs associated as there can be be outcomes. Just as the mp3 recordings from a live source, encoded from an mp3 encoder such as Lame can vary as much as the result of a QDesign sourced direct encoder on a portable player recorder, so can the same occur between Hi-SP/Hi-LP encoding from Sonicstage and the same mode of encodings from the TYPE-R/TYPE-S modules in the Net-MD/Hi-MD decks. So it's pretty safe to say that you gotta work with what works for you, by all means explore, but dont go down the endless cliff slope of chasing miniscual improvements for the sake of, when the return is often a case of decreasing gains especially when your comparision basis is flawed in the first place (aka like the comparing little-filtered codecs vs highly-filtered common mp3 encodings). The very fact that ATRAC has everyday use, and not just 'niche' (the perception of us, but the more polite out there) end-users such as us lot, means it must work for those who use it - therefore, it works well enough, and until we have a serious alternative that we can use and move to cheaply and not destroy equipment/resource investment, then we can be happy with what we have already.

Well, i am a lower rates user when the situation dictates it. I'm notorious for using mp3pro encoding, used in legacy playback as 22050Khz mp3's from 44100Khz 'pro files, for when i need extra compactness on mp3 discs, so likewise, when i need a bulk load of compact audio on a CD-ROM, then my ATRAC CD's are encoded to lower levels such as 64K. I always go with the idea that you encode to suit the music, unless there is a definatel need for extra compactness and hence bit-rate compromise, but aint afraid to use high ratio encoding when the need strikes - hence why i definately had no bad comments to add about 48/64K usage. If it gets you what u want, then hey.. totally cool.. noone else's opinion counts And yes, certainly is the case that you cannot compare what's needed for portable 'on the street' use to 1am in yer quiet room at home use - you tailor stuff to suit the situation.

Well, as an ex-iRiver user, yeah.. i was one of their CDP fans for a long long time til i defected to the Sony D-NE series, i can probably be fairly objective on the subject :- Quite simply, no, there is no Sony unit that would totally replace (in every respect) an iMP-550 when you include it's wider range of codec support. I wont even lower myself to talk about iRiver decks post the 550 model, as the 550 was probably the last decently built one they offered (and even that's stretching creditability somewhat, given i personally think the 250/350 models were the best of the Korean stuff). What you will get with a Sony deck, and i talk D-NE models (aka ATRAC CD Walkmans with mp3 native support), is the ASP robustness iRiver users know and love in their preferred make (G-Shock was about the only ASP system i know of that rivalled 'ShockFree', and since your better iRiver deck is the 550, let's say.. it walks over the 550 on that account given the 550 has the ASP setup.. but dubious media tolerence). You will get MP3 native playback of MP3 files, better legacy playback of mp3pro files (aka less the SBR decodable data) than the iRiver's ever produced - in fact, and it may be simply my ears here .. but i considered the Sony decoder to carry a less raw more music smooth decode of mp3 and mp3pro (in legacy mp3 use) output. You may not notice it on 'cans', but using line-out to a hifi, and you def can hear a difference (that said, i do use some substantial hifi kit, no high-street 'toys' in the stack). Basically, mp3 and ATRAC support is the whole compressed audio support on the decks (by design), so if multi-codec=3+ formats is your impression of 'worthy' than the D-NE's are not gonna be your cup of happiness poison. For argument sake, i have lumped ATRAC3 and ATRAC3Plus together as one codec, even if they are really two, for simplicity. So what you get with a D-NE is outstandng battery endurance still not really matched outside of Sony products, and a bombproof G-Shock system and mucho light (like it feels like a casing full of fresh air) build if you go for a super-slim item like the D-NE20. Media tolerence is, in my experience, better with the D-NE'1 vs the iMP-550 ( i have RW's and R's here that a 550 would choke on, that the D-NE1 and D-NE20 will happily play). It really depends on what you want - i eventually retired my iMP-250 (the last of a line of decks i had commercially exploited to death and killed) around the nth non-release of Ogg support for the iMP series, and opted for a D-NE1 for it's G-Shock (no way would i settle for less than the purrfect equiv to ShockFree robustness) and massive battery endurance. The D-NE1, the two gumstick oldie, would literally run on shuffle play using mp3 discs, to it's specified endurance without fail, except for when air temp was real low (below the operating temp range of Ni-MH cells) when as you would expect (in they used Ni-Mh cells), the cell's would underperform. Haven't ever needed the AA backpack on the NE-1, and i cannot state experiences of running times with the D-NE20 as i rarely need to run it for more than 8 hrs in one hit, so that's well below even worst case. If you, as an iRiver user, remember the infamous 'Cat Test's of my namesake at the iRiver forum (yeah, i am that same 'cat'), then u know where i come from and do talk objectively. If iRiver went back to quality decks, i'd be back in their arena, til then.. Sony is my CDP source

* checks his 'cool cat' kit, and sees he has the ACME 'SupanovaProof' shades and insane SPF sunscreen available * All i can say is... give it your best shot, asteroid, i wont be a young 'cat' then, and hey.. do your worst Always wanted to go out with a bang, and if the predictions of a big asteroid collision are of the 'nuked from orbit' level it's portrayed to be, well.. ground zero is the place to be

iyareu.. interesting to see someone write about 64k decode as heard on those more HQ phones.. Interesting, i say, as it's not the norm to hear someone talk about their pleasent experiences using such extremes in combination. But i def agree that the use of good phones can make all the diff - they are a double edged sword in the sense they can make some encodings sound crap (and that is usually literally then proven to be the use of extreme encoding compression where the audio itself really needed much less extreme encoding to even come close to halfway decent repro), but they do tend to (decent phones) prove a lot of what people are mislead to believe about lower range bitrate encodings to be kinda on the borders of BS of the highest order. True, personal taste and tolerence comes much into play here, but hey.. good on you for braving the use of lower-rate encodings with decent cans, and if they make your inner cat spirit purr contently, then you aint doing nothing wrong and should be recognised for your preference

Well, i will add Koss KTX Pro's to the walkman phones (rather than 'buds') list, and i am referring to the original ones (all black, not the later KTX Pro 1 series that were silvery finished). They performed pretty well on the old D-NE1, and like with the higher imp phones, the vol had to be compensated to suit (as you would expect), but because they were pretty responsive (way above the league of most 'buds' and even the expensive stuff) and quite efficient, the boost needed was not substantial even on a bus/train. The KTX Pro's were also my 'monitor' phones i used with the Cat Test's i did for iRiver unofficially. If you need fair quality (remember, most people are talking walkman phones money, not AP market prices, for not-sh*t usable quality) then i would say that the MDR-V series (i used the 300's) aint too bad - wouldn't chose them over my EH2200's (for indoor use), but they are a nice compromise for non-bud phone solutions. Ironicially enough, and i suspect this may raise the odd eyebrow, my absolute fav cans used with Sony kit so far are.... *drum rolls.. cue cat ducking for cover, least the AP's of the forum stone him for blashphemy* Speedlink Medusa 5.1 cans, using the plug in 2 channel adaptor so they act as multi-driver stereo speakers (in other words, each can has a tweeter and midrange and woofer and subwoofer in each can). I am referring to the analogue version (the ones that require a discrete analogue outputs for surround sound mode when connected to approp equipment) by the way Now i was just doing a test with the NW-NH1, using some 256K recordings (taken from WMA Q100 LSL's that i know very well, and hence would very predicatble in their repro). Ok, as you would expect, the Med's would need a bit of a vol boost due to the driver arrangement they have (the supplied amp, that comes with them, for taking the discrete 5.1 feeds off suitable kit and feeds the output to a multi-way din type connector, is quite a meaty lil amp anyway), so 'phones output' mode (setting on the player) may dissapoint. But the trick is to... switch output to 'line', and use the inline discrete vol adjusters on the lead of the 5.1 phones to compensate. You get a taste (despite the impedence mismatch) on the proper 'phones out' setting of the deck of what it might sound like to have multi-way speakers inserted in your cans, but use it in line-out mode, and repeat, and wow... All i will say is (and i paid about 40 UKP for mine, thanks to a nice discount i won myself), for indoor use, the cat is definately purring using them in line-connected use, you can even hear the subbies kicking in and out when the sound drives them - War of the Worlds is something else to hear.. you gotta listen to it.. it'll speak for itself through those cans. Not a portable solution, i admit, but if you wanted a multi-purpose set of cans (they have a mic boom too) to use with your walkman on the train to and from work, be able to use them for conferencing on your work PC, and also have 5.1 for movie/audio playback, then the Medusa 5.1's are nice all-rounders, and not silly money either I'll try them on the D-NE1 and D-NE20 in the morning and give some feedback to see if the results of the MD playback tie up with 256K decodes on the CDP's.

Well, at least now u got some guidance 'on the record', from Sony, if you do get a failure prob or some residual issue relating to such things, and u did take all sane and practical precautions to protect your unit, they have kinda opened the door and invited u (although they may not realise it) to make a case out of if the worst happens. But like i said, and humidity/temp related issues were covered in my reply, and with fairness to what was added after my post re pressure (and yes, on a more tech level than i covered, it has fair and valid points to consider) i think it's very safe to say what we all kinda knew in the back of our minds, that the 'beware' notices they stick in manuals about altitude etc, low-pressure used, is kinda more a case of 'covering our collective asses' - in many cases, mech and electro-mech devices are a damn sight more tolerent than you think often God knows, the JB1 i used as a recorder, during the Cat Tests (to record the output from test decks) so i had a reliable reviewable way to assess just how little or how much failure there was with CDP anti-shock, it got hammered somewhat from vibration (and remember, it was in record mode, so way more HDD activity since it was recording to 48Khz WAV) than your average playback mode disk activity - and it survived fine. Mind you, it was in a carrier, strapped to the small of my back like i suggested in my first reply, to help it exist in a place that was naturally subject to the best anti-shock isolation..aka your body If you jump off something, and land, and it stings yer paws, then the odds are it's 'harsh' enough to induce some kinda vibration that would test the anti-shock resistence/resilience of a device

i chose 'none of the above' as i strictly dont subscribe to working to bit-rates. If i had to pin down to a fav, however, it would be 105 or 132 ATRAC3. That's not decided on on quality terms, or even strictly on compactness ground (if quality were the be all and end all, 256K would be the safe ground, supported on all my decks). But i happen to know that a big disc set compilation, like some of those 8 disc compilation collections sold through Wal-Mart, or Asda's here in the UK, well, at 105 or 132 (cant remember exactly which at this moment), is perfect for getting all 8x up-to-74 mins actual run time CD's onto on 74min RW - purrfect for ATRAC CD use with a D-NE. 105 or smaller (according to necessity) would be the logical choice with Net-MD/Hi-MD using 80 min MD's, or any suitable (based on the analysis of each track according to a a spread of diff encodings) alternative that gives a usable result - when using the MD in multi-album, multi-disc on one MD mode. When it comes to one album per MD, aka using the MD in 'walkman' mode, clearly, it's gonna be high rate encoding all the way - when i listen to something like War of The Worlds (the analogue transfer from my 1st release vinyl, or the recent SA-CD remaster), i go totally hi-rate within the limits of needing to get two long CD's on one 80 min MD. When all is said and done, yes the spread of available rates may seem (to the outsider) like a bit-rate drought, by as we know pretty well here, there is a combo available to suit most needs. Given 105 or 132 is the distribution rate used by the Connect store, putting it's distros in the same size/quality league as the more legal-downloads preferred 128K WMA alternative form, it kinda qualifies those two rates aint totally unsuited for semi-compact downloadable form. As i said before, the content defines what rate gives the best repro, and this is totally the case for ANY codec used, the end result of what you can live with, is much based on your ears vs storage capacity, and it's amazing still what you can actually live with.. - after all, we shouldn't really be expecting to reproduce what we hear out of such a device through a nice expensive indoor amp and speakers, to appear out of compact portable phones off the internal amp of the players - such audiophile expectations would be pretty damn crazy. And yet, out there, they exist, such people..., sadly - and they also tend to have a big influence on 'suggested encoding strategies' for newcomers.

Crazy eh..?? On one level, we are talking state-specific implementation of controls (with the usual worst-case employed scenario of one state affecting all), and at the same time they (the EU) are talking about the need to unify the music licensing within the community (aka an EU wide unified music licensing system to reduced the need for individual state specific licensing). If one side is the left hand, the other side is the right hand, then i would hate to be the controlling brain coordinating those two 'hands'

Funny thing the media compatibility.. In compressed audio mode (ATRAC/MP3) :- Now i dont use a lot of CD-R's in mine, only stuff on a final burn (aka burnt disc-at-once) so it never had to handle multi-session stuff i made up - seems to work well ok and cleanly with the cheap white-back bulk pack stuff got from Maplin UK (my main source of disposable cheapies). The discs in question are 52x rated, but my 40x and 16x burnt examples (burnt using DAO-96 mode in Nero). CD-RW's, now we talk a diff story. One trait it seems to share with the D-NE1, is a slight intolerence of decent grade hi-speed RW's. Maybe i am unlucky, or maybe the images burnt were a little iffy (will retest tonight), but the D-NE1 & 20 loves my old crappy Valuepoint 74min 2x's (which will burn to 4x) and they are seriously battered (only used really as tolerence test discs, due to a much poor condition now). Likewise, the first gen D-NE1 and the D-NE20 also gets on very well with 4x rated (and burnt at) Maxell 74min CD-RW's. If the disc aint got really noticable gouges on the underside, the deck will play even scratched examples ok (as long as the data is intact i mean). It's a little bit like a nervous kitten over Memorex medium speed 80m examples (4-16x rated range stuff), it can sometimes take one or two loads before it recognises and indexes one, but that said those discs were burnt with an LG 16x DVD-Rewriter which i am not fond of (has produced some questionable condition CD-R's and DVD-RW results), will reproduce this with my old Liteon DVD and CD writers and edit/amend appropriately. Using stuff burnt on that same LG unit, the resulting hi-speed (16-24x rated range stuff) discs have been very much hit and miss. Actually, this is a dissapointment, as i bought the hi-speed stuff specially for the quick makeup of ATRAC CD's on CD-RW (i clone the results to CD-R outside of SonicStage, I simply dont trust SS with CD-R's). As for audio cd use.. Loves the hybrid Sony BMG stuff i have (including the SA-CD hybrid of War of The Worlds, the recent remastered one) and the EMI Gold Classic Rock comp set i picked up (copy controlled stuff), also handled my very old and borderline dodgy condition home-burns (stuff i use as working copies, on cheap media, that are analogue restorations). We aint talking Sony home CD deck bombproof as far as damaged discs go (their late 80's decks, were like the dogs wotsists for tolerence with scratched media), but way above the grade of tolerence of many decks in the portable field.. and almost as bombproof as my old iMP-250 (that was to iRiver what Sony of old was to indoor decks). That all said and done, and bear in mind i will amend this as i am writing from memory mostly at the moment, i would go with what has been said over audio (using Speedlink Medusa analogue 5.1 phones with 2 channel adaptor for indoor use, MDR-V300's for outdoor use, and sometimes the Senheisser EH2200's when they aint used elsewhere). The cat wont use 'earphones', so got no idea how it sounds on the lil beasties. Totally agree with the comments re the remote, was it supposed to be a integrated dexterity tester as well, coz damn well feels like it, so i simply whack it one shuffle all.

Sounds very much like Sony are either hedging their bets, or playing one hell of a confusing game.. Understandably, there is always room for a cheap priced mp3/CDA CDP, after all they have similar in the incar and home audio markets, but if it's not to keep a cheap mp3 option there, then i defy anyone to rationalise another good reason to make some mp3 only units as well. After all, if you chose an ATRAC CD walkman on terms of bat life etc, and effective anti-shock, and you were a hardened mp3 user, then you needn't touch ATRAC and whilst that may sound like a 50% waste to only use 1/3rd of it's playback capability, then wow.. that makes most multi-codec decks sorely underutilised (many people only use one format of the many on multi-codec units). Why i question their commitment, Sony i mean, is they are chucking all this stuff on the market, yet there is no unity between portables market and that of their more serious stuff (the incar and home audio kit) - can anyone name an incar or home deck (DVD or CDP) that supports ATRAC..?? MD equipped in-car units (current models) are kinda rare (Hi-MD are almost mythical in that department) and ATRAC CD compat car decks are like the stuff of fantasy - as far as availability goes.

Well, i can't give you a definately yes or no to this, but instead.. here's some food for thought that might help .... In space, aka on things like the Shuttle, they have used HDD'son computers before to the best of my knowledge - now the 'altitude' relative to sea level there, is way way above the kinda levels you are talking of, and yet they seem to get by without rapid HDD demise (and in zero g too). As far as altitude related effects go re atmospheric pressure and humidty and temp goes :- Up there in orbit, the atmospheric pressure used in pressurised cabins is lower than the 1 atmosphere we are used to on earth as i recall, this is a precaution vs explosive decompression in the event of an integrity failure (aka if the outside pressure, tech o atmospheres in space, vs 1-2 third of 1 atmosphere in an enviromment suit or pressurised cabin means that the loss of pressure in the event of a breach takes longer to happen .. how long depends on the scale of the breach and the pressure diff vs the size of the aperture that is the breach). Most equipment seems to work ok up there - slight variations in performance and efficiency but overall ok - often humidity changes has more effect than pressure diffs. So i figure you are on reasonably safe ground, personally. Whilst you might want to research what i have glossed over above (really way too much stuff to reproduce here, and even the dynamics of effects is way outside my field of experience), you'll find the tolerences of many kinda of so-called sensitive devices is way better than you imagine. If you were to ask my advice.. it would be this :- 1) Go ahead. 2) Put the device in a good carrier that insulates it from the cold and will protect it from drops. In fact, when working off rechargable cells for power, the temp factor is more an issue here, as the operating temp range of a cell type is pretty much what you should (without additional heat retaining insulation work) work within for optimal endurance (aka to ensure the cell works chemically and effective within tolerences - if you had seen how quick a ni-cad performance drops off in a wind-chill situation of around -15 to -20C, you'd see why rechargable cell packs for extreme environments are often heavier due to additional thermal insulation). So to combat that prob, get a good carrier from somewhere, that literally encloses the device and will also contain an aux battery pack if used and wear it on your body as close to the body as poss (the ambident reliable heat source really), and guess what..?? As you trek, you generate body heat, which will then help keep the device warm and hence help to combat residual discharge of the cell pack, and also keep a fairly substantial stable temperature around the device. When i can't use a bespoke or close fitting case for equipment, in harsh temp environments (ever felt how cold it can get up in the air stream on a transmitter tower.. on a windy winter day??), my preferred second-best choice is a good CDP carrier, the kind that sits on your belt - but have it so the case sits against the small of your back, so it's out of the way and is also in a good place to be fairly well insulated vs persistent shock from walking etc. When i did the Cat Test series for testing anti-shock systems with iRiver equipment, i used that same approach to give the equipment (CDP's) the best starting point to work under, and it never failed Good luck, and go with your instincts on this dilemma

Had a D-NE1 from their initial UK release. This replaced my then dying iMP-250 (then, the dogs wotsits for anti-shock and quality in the mp3 cdp market even if it was a dead model as far as iRiver were concerned) - it sold itself to me due to it's massive battery endurance which even when i estimated it to be 25% over exaggerated (and got proven wrong, and happy to discover my paranoia was unfounded) and mp3 support and that Sony's G-Shock system was known to be good enough to fit my needs (again, noone else had a mp3 cdp with an equal ASP facility to that of the iMP series, until the D-NE's came along). Eventually i moved into ATRAC CD use, and it was the lack of seamless support that was my only black mark on an otherwise brill design. D-NE20 (bought six months after UK release) when i discovered that seamless support in ATRAC had been added (somehow missed the release of the intermediate gen) - this completed the criteria and did what the D-NE1 lacked. Shame it's endurance was down on the D-NE1, but no probs as i have two spare cell packs from the D-NE1 to fall back on Those two, combined with the ownership of a Hi-MD unit, literally means i have a deck choice for all seasons. The D-NE series is the true 'Discman' of the compressed audio world (SS is not the prep tool of choice mind, not that you have a say in having anything else to work with instead), in the same way the Hi-MD has literally spawned the latest evo of the only true 'Digital Walkman' One happy virtual cat spirit, methinks Closing thought - i must have lucked out twice - as neither of my UK destined D-NE's were capped, somehow i ended up with non-capped units packed 'capped supply' UK packaging with UK accessories supplied, and yes they were all new-stock and untouched, damn lucky case of lightning strking twice

Would have to agree with the sentiments of how stupid is it, on paper and in the public perception, that the only supported method of playback of ATRAC CD's is via an ATRAC CD walkman. Before i recently bit the bullet and bought myself a new MD unit (was freaked out against buying one after my baaaaad experience of using them in broadcasting), i went with ATRAC via a D-NE1 and more recently a D-NE20 to replace an aging pair of iRiver CDP's. So when i write the following, i write it from a users's POV, and also from an outsider-insider POV (i was involved in the DAP industry at one time, and no.. i was not in sales either). It would be so easy to add ATRAC CD playback capability to SonicStage, and why not.... after all, if you were able to buy ATRAC CD's commericially (or literally bought legit pre-gened items from a band you followed), why not be able to use your installed Sonicstage at work to listen to the discs with, where you may not be allowed to bring in your DAP..?? (yes, some places do allow you to listen to music on your PC at work, provided you apply discretion). And it would literally take no effort to add ATRAC support for CD playback to Sony/Awia DVD units (i assume there must be an AWIA unit out there somewhere) or any other make that has licensed ATRAC CD in their audio products and yet also produce AV players. It's a matter of willingness vs battling against ridiculous licensing thrashing that often kills such results (either the license issuer brickwalls you unless u tow the corporate line, or the battle becomes fruitless and redundant). But let's say in a perfect or willing world, someone saw the wisdom of ATRAC CD playback (say either by a licensed plugin or a Sony released soft player) - what would the fear factor be for the corporate darker denziens of the music arm of Sony..?? Well, for a starter, at the moment the DRM in use in the ATRAC CD format files is kinda still a dark and mystical beast that aint been cracked (exactly why is 'out there', probably because there is no widespread motivation to crack it), so we are still waiting on Sony... but let's just say, someone did stick their neck out and produce a simple plugin (through mucho dark rites induced reverse engineering and whatever else methods) to simply produce a soft ATRAC CD player or plugin.. what else would come out from it..?? A crack, or a serverly uprated chance of a crack for the DRM, and hence the ability to progress from simple playback to... decloaking the audio data from it's ATP wrapper, back to say the equiv OMG/OMA files with or without DRM. You reckon the pressure, on those grounds, from the music arm to veto any such legit concession to a licensed or approved software player/plugin wouldn't be unsubstantial..?? They'd stamp on such an idea from on high, with mighty vengence, and probably do a 'assign you to the Eastern Front' action vs the idiot who stupidly suggested such a noble and useful concept. I know people who made similar kinda of suggestions at other companies who were less draconian in their policies. who found themselves out on a limb and fired with extreme vengence for making that mistake - god help you if you made the same ferk-up at Sony I think that more or less sums up the potential sane reasons why little pressure comes from within at Sony or Awia to go with such a nice software player/licensed plugin move. The reasons, which also involve similar mentality employed in the 'anti-ness', is also a high candidate for reasons it never really gets onto 'possible corp policy' agendas. God knows, i locked horns with the Koreans often enough to know how unfriendly a situation can be when your good ideas simply have no form or function in corporate policy or thinking, from my days representing and consulting with Reigncom (aka iRiver), and if my Sony dealings (as an interested party on tech grounds, but mostly as a customer) are anything to go by - i'd rather have a headbutting match with the corporates at Reigncom thanks - at least i know humanity exists there somewhere, unlike at Sony where the atmosphere practically stinks of molten brimestone on a high temp boil Sorry if that's a tad negative, but it's my impression from experience - i do like what we have, just wished the corporates would get their heads outa their collective asses and actually exploit what they started. D-NE series, definately was a serious step in the right direction (definately contributed to the obsession other manufacturers undertook to compete on both slimness and long-endurance grounds and product quality too). Hi-MD - definately a good evo of what is still the only real 'digtal walkman' concept that was not tied to a PC for content loading Love my Sony kit, even if i would happily nuke the corporates from orbit

Hi, i'm new to the forum, but no newbie when it comes to encoding and prepping audio to compressed audio forms Was doing the compressed audio thing back before most of the people at HA ever heard of mp3 So to cut through all the usual 'x vs y' BS that often comes into replies, and that's not reflecting on previous responses to your question - a reflection instead on the usual line that most people in other forums feed.., here's my take :- As to which codec, ATRAC3 or ATRAC3PLUS, goes - simple answer is, use what works for YOU (yes, you, not what other people think is the best solution). The only way you'll discover that outcome, is to literally invest time and effort into encoding and testing to see what solution works best for YOUR needs (again, ferk the rest of the world, it's your deck.. your effort, your satisfaction counts here not that which suits me or the rest) The safe road, if not overly efficient one, is to literally encode at the highest rate available and ferk the excessive capacity hit is has on the storage of the player. It's the safe road, in the sense that, it'll gen results as good as they will get, at a cost of some of those tracks (more than initial 'net advice' impressions will lead u to believe) being overly high-rate encoded when some of them could easily gen decent enough results at a lower bit-rate encoding. It's literally a suck-it-and-see situation. So looking at your situation, i figure you need to see it from two perspectives... 1) Demoing As a lecuturer of music, clearly having stuff on tap on your player is handy, as a compact way of being able to play back sample items you want to talk about to classes etc. So i would suggest for those instances, anything you are going to use for demo, gets encoded for max resulting quality. That's sticking to the safe ground, but being a victim of sound demos that involved some dire (hellish) quick-win low-rate encodings before (i thank the lecturer on sound i had at college, during my academic days, by means of a kick in the teeth if i could, for subjecting us to his super-duper low-grade MP3 demo's). Let me put it this way, his were so poor, that even the poorest grade comms circuit can carry better quality compressed audio than his demos' demonstrated. So find your balance for quality, on a track by track basis, for the demo stuff and if need be, go with the safe ground, and compile those into a playlist or album to keep on the portable player when needed (and on your indoor HDD in readiness), so you can switch over to the compilation of demo tracks when needed. This is one trait those much-unappreciated ATRAC CD walkmans had, the instant swap facility, where i would have (in your shoes.. in a similar demoing vein), kept demo ATRAC CD's to use for demoing with, and went with whatever-works encoded ATRAC CD's for personal listening use. So, essentially, apply a 'for demo' strategy for stuff that's gonna be demoed based on the fact that the demo material is for that , not personal listening, and you wont go wrong. 2. Personal use This is the more involved issue of the two... My personal strategy is simple.. a) Encode all audio (from sources) to lossless form for archive. Pre to the latest SS release, i used WMA Lossless for simplicity (aka it direct imported and could be encoded from to ATRAC in SS 2.0 onwards from WMA LSL without issues). But if you can use SS 3.3 (dont think SS 3.2 gave the facility, since i skipped that release), your CD's and analog sourced recordings can be stored in ATRAC Advanced Lossless instead - which allows you to choose a quick-transfer lossly format for rapid transfer (in lossy form) to portables, but at a cost of slighty slower transfer, the ATRAC LSL's can also go to any supported codec/bit-rate supported by the portable deck. Having LSL's archived, and in your available library, will save you much time later on The same response i started out with, vs ATRAC3 and ATRAC3PLus still applies, but instead of looking at it from a 'which to use' point of view, you should really think of it along the 'what works' line of thinking. Clearly, when you want to use ATRAC3PLUS specific bit-rates (and there will be times you want the ultra-high and ultra-low combos), you can't use those same ultra-extremes with ATRAC3, so you'll have to encode to PLUS when you want those. Likewise, where 66/105/132 combinations suit a given purpose, and the nearest PLUS combos are either too low/size efficiency too restrictive, then you'll be using ATRAC3 for such instances. So returning to my strategy, vs your use and how it reflects on your use (i often have to demo audio for the purposes of showing how PA type compression effects audio) :- Make lossies to suit :- 1. Get your audio into LSL form and have it archived and available in your library. 2. For each track/audio instanct, make one conversion to lossy form for every bit-rate combo. Then, and this will generate thousands of files if your collection of source audio is massive (and mine is, it's literally a a big commericial radio library worth + my personal collection which counts into 5 figures in terms of discs/tapes/carts etc alone), you can spend time going through the results and back-to-back test the combinations either on PC or on your player (whatever you do in that respect, use either decent phones/speakers to audition with for purist outcomes, or use what you will most commonly listen with in terms of portable phones). Although this, on the surface, sounds manic obsessive and a hell of a lot of time invested, it certainly is not time wasted. It gives you a massive perspective on the matter which allows you to recognise over the period of time encoding and auditioning, simply what works for what types of audio source. Remember, there is no one perfect bitrate/codec combo that will take any one genre and give transparent or even low-grade acceptable consistent use results, two very similar sounding pieces can often require quite diverse encoding methods to get similar high or medium grade results. One thing that can be said for ATRAC (to account for all it's incarnations) is whilst it lacks the massive-rate range implemented that the common compressed-audio encoders used outside of thoses circles generate, you have a nice swiss-army knife selection of usable codec/bitrate combos preset in the encoder. I'm no fan of preset encoding, (ask anyone who has seen my writing on MP3PLAYERS.CO.UK forum and the iRiver forum, re Lame and Lame presets, and how i detest slavery to preset encoding), but when it comes to ATRAC which is essentially a very end-user codec group (aka intended for simply compress and go non-techy usage), i dont mind being a slave to preset bitrate combos, and if you like a quiet hassle-free life, i think you will grow to accept it too God knows, after having to be an encoding obsessive in my various work relating to broadcasting prep/engineering and whilst working with domestic compressed-audio users during my iRiver and MP3PLAYERS.CO.UK forum time as their off-the-books tech support guy/'cat' (if you pop over there, look for the cat-related nickname, it's very frequent in the archives), i find the freshness of having stuff in a grab and go fashion to be like the miracle cold cure that clears the migranes and sinus hassles of a flu, in respect to on-the-fly library to device transfer. The most important lesson here is... You aint gonna learn nothing, without investing time to discover what works I am not saying u need to follow all the above, just chew over it and keep it in mind Regards 'Tom Kat' aka JustAnUnCoolCat from the iRiver and MP3PLAYERS forum days *yep, it's me.. you can tell by the scorched virtual fur.. and mucho scars of my scraps with the HA and Ogg user communities* [ Currently purring happily with a D-NE1, D-NE20 after iRiver lost the CDP plot somewhat, and a NW-NH1 MD unit, for those times i need MD]