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The Mule

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Posts posted by The Mule

  9. ATRAC - yay or nay?

    in Audio

    Posted

    I don't think Sony should have given up on atrac because it certainly had its merits but it didn't really catch on. I download all my music off the net in MP3 format. I used to convert them to Atrac because I wanted gapless. Then when I started storing MP3's I realised they were being played back in gapless aswell.

    As far as sound quality is concerned, that was one of the main things Sony believed was superior with Atrac compared to its rival formats. Eventually they gave up because other formats had cornered the market and after years of development they gave up (which seems a waste of all the years they spent developing atrac).

  10. You're listening to Atrac (even if your device is playing an MP3)

    in Audio

    Posted

    Was reading a review of the MW-A3000 and found this bit of technical info

    The audio quality is even more stunning when you learn that the NWA-3000 isn't natively compatible with MP3, instead it holds MP3 files in their raw format on the 20gb hard disk and converts them to ATRAC3 on replay. This seems like a strange decision especially considering other Sony models have started to use MP3 codecs, the only downside we could find of this method is a drop off in battery performance when playing MP3's compared to ATRAC3 files.

    Never knew that when playing a track the machine converts the MP3 signal to ATRAC before amplifying it. Don't really see the point in doing that. It just means more work for the processor to do and that is why the battery runs out faster with MP3's.

    So no matter whether you listen to MP3's or Atrac3, it will be an Atrac signal you hear in your headphones. :D

    I'm sure the newer models won't do this, since it seems to be a measure taken by Sony when they still had ambitions for Atrac.

  13. New SonicStage CP 4.3

    in Software Updates

    Posted · Edited by The Mule

    Probably about 40 tracks or so - I'm using Mp3's, i think the main problem will be trying to find all the tracks with no year because their scattered out over various albums....and then restore the files from the recycle bin because i deleted them after transfer :-)

  18. Should I delete my atrac files and start afresh?

    in Audio

    Posted

    The main reason for changing is that i download 90% of my music in mp3 format. I had been converting all these mp3's to atrac when i transferred them to the player so i could have gapless, and this was time consuming. When Sony announced it was abandoning Atrac i thought it would be a good time to switch to mp3 as i had only about 3.5Gb on a 20Gb machine. Since listening to mp3's on the player i notice that it's gapless aswell! I'm definitely sticking with mp3 from now on but i do have a couple of gripes about it.

    When playing VBR mp3's the clock timer goes crazy while the track is playing, obviously some kind of time code problem playing bit rates which arent constant.

    And trying to get SonicStage 4.3 installed on my PC is hell because i don't have an internet connection on my home PC. I tried to download the SonicStageInstaller onto a disc but when i load it on my PC requests the server.

    So overall, changing from mp3 has been worthwhile but trying to upgrade the software has been troublesome.

  20. Should I delete my atrac files and start afresh?

    in Audio

    Posted

    So i upgraded to SonicStage CP 4.3 and started transferring MP3's to the device. Now i find when play back tracks with a variable bit rate the clock/timer at the bottom left corner of the NW-A3000 screen goes crazy jumping back and forth rather than just going forward.

    I vaguely remember someone talking about this on this forum a while back but i cant find the thread. Anyone else experienced this? It says that Firmware 3.0 supported VBR but there seems to be some sort of glitch.

  22. Should I delete my atrac files and start afresh?

    in Audio

    Posted

    Most of the stuff i have on the player is stored on my PC in mp3 format anyway. I had been converting it to Atrac just so I could use gapless. But this process is pretty time consuming, plus I have been using Connect Version 1.0 as the later versions don't let you convert mp3 to Atrac.

    I have to admit i am very tempted just to start afresh after hearing that Atrac was going to be made redundant. I have a lot of music still to add to the player and changing to Mp3 would also mean i could upgrade to the latest software and have my music transfered over much quicker.

  23. Should I delete my atrac files and start afresh?

    in Audio

    Posted

    I have a 20Gb player which is roughly 3Gb full. All the files stored on it are atrac (i used this format because I prefer gapless). Having just read that this format is going to be rendered obsolete I was wondering whether I should go through the hassle of deleting it all and replacing them with MP3's since only a small percentage of the memory is filled. The other option is to keep on adding songs in atrac format.

    Quite interested to see if other atrac users are continuing to add songs to their players in atrac format or if they have "converted" to MP3.

  24. Converting songs after transferring

    in Audio

    Posted

    Re encoding from a lossy format to another lossy format, say wma to mp3 or mp3 to mp3, you lose even more quality.

    I found that re-encoding from MP3 to Atrac3 was fine as long as the bit rate is kept the same. I do this with all the songs I transfer (to increase battery life) and there isnt any noticeable loss in sound quality.

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