lukpac

Whether the degradation is “significant” or not is irrelevant: it still exists. Archiving recordings in their original quality is the goal. Editing doesn’t matter.

Whether you prefer the sound or not, ATRAC encoding necessarily changes and degrades the signal.

You are incorrect. FFmpeg plays ATRAC1. QHiMDTransfer doesn't convert to WAV files, it transfers the ATRAC1 files directly. There is no reason why one would want ATRAC3plus in this case, as the original recordings are ATRAC1 and transcoding to ATRAC3plus will necessarily reduce the quality.

In practice it generally works perfectly. I've ripped hundreds of CDs, and a very small percentage have any issues, and those are generally due to damage or a particular problem with the disc. AccurateRip makes it extremely easy to verify rips are correct: http://www.accuraterip.com/ I don't know what you're referring to regarding "different qualities of ripping" in SonicStage, but that doesn't change the above regarding ripping CDs. Neither ATRAC1 nor ATRAC3plus give a "cleaner sound" than a CD, as both are lossy codecs that necessarily throw away data. Regardless, whether ATRAC1 or ATRAC3plus sounds better isn't the issue. Nothing is ever gained by lossy encoding; on the contrary, things are always lost. So while: source -> ATRAC3plus Will likely sound better than : source ->ATRAC1 This will not: source -> ATRAC1 -> ATRAC3plus That's two levels of lossy encoding, which is necessarily worse than one level. That is to say, it is preferable to get the ATRAC1 files from discs rather than ATRAC1 to ATRAC3plus transcodes.

Also...it's possible to get SP/ATRAC1 off natively. Just not with SonicStage, which transcodes to ATRAC3plus. https://www.w00fer.nl/blog/atrac1-upload-to-pc-and-playback-in-vlc/

I just got an MZ-M200 and am looking to archive my collection of recordings I made with my MZ-R700 in SP/ATRAC1 mode. I started using SonicStage, which was working well enough, but then I realized it was transcoding everything to ATRAC3plus. I subsequently found this blog entry which describes how to transfer the raw ATRAC1: https://www.w00fer.nl/blog/atrac1-upload-to-pc-and-playback-in-vlc/ That mostly works, but I've run into a few issues: - When uploading files using QHiMDTransfer, the resulting filenames are in the format [Title].aea. It would be very helpful if the filenames started with the track numbers. Is this possible via QHiMDTransfer, or possibly some other program? - When opening the AEA files in Audacity or converting them in Foobar2000 (both using FFmpeg), the first ~0.05s of each track don't match the original recording. It appears as if they start on silence, and then fade up to the correct level. Opening the ATRAC3plus OMA files from SonicStage seems to have the same issue (the WAVs generated from SonicStage are fine, however). Is this a known bug in FFmpeg? Is there any other option for converting to PCM without this issue? Thanks for any help.

Stumbling upon this late, but FYI, that isn't true at all about audio CDs. CDs are 16 bits, period, and it is incredibly easy to get a perfect copy of the data. Multiple passes can be used to verify the read is correct, but with a good reader and a CD that isn't damaged, they aren't necessary. And dither isn't a factor.

Details?

Thanks, great. Hmm. Perhaps the 900 is a better bet for me then, just for the extra option. Of course, I'd prefer to do everything uncompressed anyway, but the 1 GB discs are a tad much these days. On the other hand, I could just re-use the same few discs if I'm getting a lossless copy. Hmm.

I'm looking to upgrade from my R700. A few questions: 1) It looks like the NH900 is at least partially metal. Are the RH910 and RH10 all plastic (it looks like it from pictures)? 2) Are the display and remote pretty much the only differences between the RH910 and RH10? 3) Are there compelling reasons to go for the RH910 over the NH900? The display looks a bit nicer on the RH910, and it also does MP3 (which I don't care about), but beyond that...? My main concern is probably audio (recording) quality - were there really any changes between the two? Also...has anyone done a comparison between ATRAC/292kbps and ATRAC3plus/256kbps? I've noticed on my R700 that while I normally don't notice compression at SP, I *do* if I invert one of the channels and sum to mono (normally anything in the center would drop out - with compression you don't hear the main center signal but you still hear the artifacts). Thanks.