pata2001

I've never have any car CD deck, properly installed and secured, skipping due to road condition.

Yes, I was going to post this too. This is awesome. 96khz/24bit recording to boot! And, MSRP is only $399, cheaper than the RH1 considering you're getting 4GB storage built-in already. http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/19/sonys-p...uality-to-layp/

Nothing special about this. You just moving files around. In order for the Atrac file to be playable on minidisc, one still has to go through Sonicstage.

With storage being a non-issue nowadays, I back up all my Audio CDs to WAV, mainly to save time. For track info, I have them on a .cue sheet. Lossless, although useful for some in certain situation, imo is a waste of time considering 1TB hard-drives are on the cheap nowadays.

Yeah, I used to use it extensively when creating mix audio CDs since my car CD deck can read CD-Text. This is way before MP3 CDs. 1. It's from 2002. 2. A person in that forum already have some sort of explanation

OT, but I don't think Sonicstage can read CD-Text. I know I used to rely on another software (I think it was CD-Text manager or something) to manually copy the CD-Text info into Sonicstage's database since SS cannot read it off directly from the CD. No.

Digital means 1s and 0s. Assuming there are no other factors (scratched CDs, error correction, etc), the same 1s and 0s are being transferred under all above situations, so how would they differ? Answer, no, they're the same. Now, on the other hand, the way the optical drive and the software handles errors might differ. In the end, ripping on a PC with EAC is the surest way to get bit perfect copy.

Wouldn't it be easier if everybody just sign up for free Skydrive account (25GB), upload whatever they have, and share it? Then anybody can download them, mix them, with no degradation in quality, no waiting for shipping nor worrying about cost, no compatibility issue, no risk in the media lost in the mail, etc. The content remains the same, and actually becomes more accessible, instead of being caged in the cliques of MD users only. Point to the video, that's why the author uploaded it to youtube instead of recording it on beta tapes and mailing it to individuals, so it can be enjoyed by a lot of people.

never mind.

Err, more like a legacy leftover. The PS3 was developed and released before Sony decided to cut-off Atrac outside Japan. The PS3 doesn't even support Atrac Advance Lossless, something that you would think they would add if they're still "pushing" Atrac.

Not news because it's false. There is not even a setting for 292kbps SP Atrac on the PS3. Period. The only bitrates available on the PS3 are Atrac3+ bitrates and LP2 (132kbps Atrac3).

Anybody who is concerned about quality will use a secure CD ripper like EAC. It has a quite steep learning curve to configure, but it's the gold standard of quality CD ripper. Rip the CD to WAV using EAC, and simply have Sonicstage encode the WAV to whatever Atrac bitrate you want as needed. Pretty much, although I can argue whether it is really convenient or not.. I think any recent NW series Walkman (Japan only models, as usual) do support playback of AAL natively.

There are 2 components of AAL, the lossless part, and the lossy part. When you rip to AAL, Sonicstage will compress the audio into AAL, AND an Atrac version based on the bitrate you choose. When you transcode the AAL audio file into another format, Sonicstage does NOT transcode the lossless version, but the Atrac lossy version. This can be easily observed when you rip from CD to AAL and picked the lowest Atrac bitrate (eg. 48kbps). Any subsequent transcoding done to any Atrac bitrate will only sound as good as the lossy part (in this case, 48kbps). This made AAL pretty much useless for an intermediate lossless source, unless you have devices that can play AAL natively. If your target is LP2, for best result, is to rip in AAL + 132kbps. Or simply rip the CD to WAV, encode them to LP2, backup the WAV somewhere and delete it from your machine to save space. Anytime you need re-encoding, simply encode from the backup WAV file.

The failure of SACD/DVD-audio has little/nothing to do with iPods. Those formats were introduced before iPods are even popular, and were never popular to begin with. Why? DRM. People want to listen to their music anytime anywhere with whatever device they want/have. SACD/DVD-audio doesn't allow that. People don't like having a restrictive media, let alone paying a premium price for it. People thus chose an already established format, the plain Audio CD. Plain old Audio CD is not-restricted, compatible players are ubiquitous, and cheaper. If the recording companies allowed SACD/DVD-audio to be copied easily, had manufactures making the hardware and portable payers for cheap, and release tons of selection on the format, the story would've probably been different. Claiming that the buying public skipped SACD/DVD-audio just because they "didn't give a crap about the higher quality sound" is an ignorant statement. It's more like SACD/DVD-audio didn't give any discernible advantages over plain old audio CD for their price. I have yet to see an ABX test showing the "higher quality sound" of SACD/DVD-audio over standard Audio-CD, other than obvious differences like surround/multi-channel sound or bad mastering.

1. It's not even out yet in the US. It's only out in Japan (NW models) and Europe. 2. The price is prohibitively expensive. Everybody knows that to compete with a major player (the pricing obviously targets the iPod Touch), you have to have a product that is a lot better and cheaper, not the same price. Also consider the state of the economy today. 3. Reading from the early impressions, it's nothing special outside the OLED screen and the so-called "sound quality." All the other features/lack of are disappointing (poor internet browser, limited video capability, no gapless playback, no lossless support, some awkwardness of the UI, slow transfer speed, etc). One have to think whether it's worth the asking price or not. For the same price, the targeted competitor, the 2G iPod Touch is the better value for many, considering it's an actual mobile OS platform, and it will get major improvements with the upcoming 3.0 firmware, namely stereo bluetooth, before the Sony even officially ships in the US. The Sony X series is just a standalone MP3 player with tacked on wifi and internet. Heck, it doesn't even have bluetooth, something that Sony was heavily promoting on the previous lineup. Then, there's the iPhone. Sony could've used the same "S-master digital amp," and simply make a cheaper regular audio player, without the touch screen and useless wifi/internet browser, and price it to compete with the likes of iPod nano/Zune/Sandisk, etc. IMO that would be a better move and value. The X series is just another sign how out of touch Sony is with the market. Edit: Looking at the manual excerpts at Sony Insider, it seems the X series use capacitive touch screen (the manual said it won't work with gloves/stylus/finger nail). Interesting.