navsimpson

rumblefish - Nope, just leave it on standard... and enjoy! -Nav P.S. Terribly jealous of your headphone purchase

I know it sounds contradictory, but what 'bitrate' are you ripping using Atrac Advanced Lossless? AAL keeps a lossy copy along with the lossless copy - so if you rip at Atrac lossless 352, you'll keep lossless on your pc and have 352 transfer over to your NWA series. Since it doesn't sound like space is an issue for you, that's what I'd do. Standard transfer will do that automatically - no transcoding (i.e. changing from one bitrate to another) required. -Nav p.s. sorry about the slightly rambling nature of my posts - my brain is a little fried.

In terms of quality and bitrate, the first thing you need to think about is how you rip or import. If you've ripped at 64kbs, then transferring at 352kbs will in fact sound even worse on the device i.e. you've taken a compressed file and compressed it again. So, you first need to rip your tracks at the bitrate you want. Transferring at any bitrate other than the native one will result in a significant loss in sound quality. So, what bitrate have you ripped at? If you've ripped at the bitrate you want, then using 'Standard' will simply transfer with no changes. I believe that the NWA series supports all the possible ATRAC3+ bitrates. Personally, I like to have the highest sound quality I can, even when I can't tell the difference really. However, when riding the bus, there's definitely no way I can tell the difference between 256 and 352, or sometimes even 192 and 352. Sure, when I'm walking down a quiet street I might be able to, but not normally. If you have really good speakers or headphones hooked up to your PC, then ripping at high bitrates may be useful, but if not, using 192 should give you a good balance of quality and file size. -Nav

Do keep in mind that using ATRAC versus MP3 at the same bitrate will give you better battery life i.e. ATRAC 256 will give you better battery life than MP3 256. Like many others have stated, that's the only reason I haven't re-ripped my collection in LAME... I wish Sony would tweak ATRAC3+, or even create an 'ATRAC4' that had better-than-LAME sound quality.... ah well. -Nav

Well, I *finally* got a 1gb mem stick for my PSP yesterday and it rocks... it's so great to be able to download basically anything and just keep it without having to keep deleting. With photos, video, music and demos on there, my PSP is finally a multimedia device... Anyway, I transferred some music over and DSP, you're right - it does sound pretty damn good. I wish there was a custom equalizer, so that you could set it yourself - but to my ears, it sounds almost as good as my NWHD3, which is pretty good. The bass sounds a little weak, but perhaps that's just my headphones. -Nav

Yeah, the whole 40hrs thing is as likely as Sony selling music that isn't DRMed! But if your music is all at ATRAC3+ 64kbs, then you should actually get quite a lot of battery life - maybe 25hrs, which is good by anyone's standards. My HD3 gets about 12-13 hours playing a mix of 192 and 352 and about half that playing 320 MP3s. -Nav

Also, if you do re-import using ATRAC, make sure you uncheck 'add copy protection' or, if you do a system restore etc., you'll be in the same position. Sorry about your troubles dude - that really sux -Nav

If you right-click on each album, there should be a listing for 'artist initial'. It's possible that the artist initial is blank for all your tracks. Unfortunately, I don't know a way to do a batch fix of this - you might have to go in and fix each one individually. Hope this helps. -Nav

I'm guessing with the PS3 launch not exactly going well, Sony has bigger fish to fry, but... Anyone heard anything about the release of the ATRAC SDK? Sony are struggling right now and, if they are planning a new ecosystem, it seems very possible they might ditch ATRAC. If they do, I won't be that upset - but it'd be nice to see what people could do with Sonicstage or ATRAC if they actually got the chance to muck around with it. I'd love to see plugins and/or improvements to the software, maybe even to the codec itself. So - anyone know what's up? -Nav

Firstly, anyone who uses the phrase 'a bit pants' should frequent this forum more often! That is brilliant. Anyway - yes, you're right SS is pants at this. I have a ripped copy of Pearl Jam's "Ten" and it couldn't find the artwork for it - but Mogwai or Tortoise aren't a problem. I figure if it can't find the artwork for "Ten" then it's suspect at best. So, if it doesn't find it when you right-click on 'find cover art/more info', you're copying and pasting method is your only choice. Ah well. -Nav

I've never really used the PSP for music either - still only have the original 32mb mem stick - but here's a link backing you up: http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11297_7-6510133-1.html -Nav

maxthrusters - I never thought of that! That's brilliant... But seriously - it's getting harder and harder to care. ATRAC at 352kbs sounds about as good as it gets for lossy files, but I think that has more to do with the high bitrate than with anything else. With LAME and AAC providing on-par, if not better sound quality at most bitrates, the reasons to use ATRAC are pretty limited right now. If ATRAC was an open format - i.e. supported by multiple software players and devices - it'd be great and would warrant development, particularly a VBR format. But my guess is that even Sony will start to move to AAC soon - see the 'default codec' on the PS3 and inclusion of AAC *and* HE-AAC into Sonicstage. The main reason I use ATRAC now is the battery life - my 18 month old HD3 gets me about 12 hours with ATRAC (mostly 256 and up) and only 6 or 7 with MP3 (mostly at 320kbs). Otherwise, I think I'd just use LAME. At the end of the day, what one wants is efficiency, and a great balance between file size and sound quality. Given that I really like Sony DAPs - their SQ and their quirky aesthetic - I guess I don't really care what format they use... as long as they fix their software!!!

Yep - no go with SE phones and Sonicstage. You can, if you're looking for a minimal amount of hassle, just drag and drop into the 'MP3' folder (if it's not there, just create it). You can, if you wish, download something called the iTunes Mass Storage Synchroniser and use it with iTunes. -Nav

I'm guessing you're trying to save battery life, and I suppose transferring at 352 is the best you can do. Still, you're right - the audio quality of those files will be dropping. As Ascariss says, your best bet is to either just transfer them as MP3s or rip in ATRAC.

It sounds like you have Connect set to transfer to your player at a specific bitrate - perhaps at 64kbs. If that's the case, and you've ripped music at some other bitrate, then Connect will keep a copy of the 64kbs file in addition to the original. Since the NWA3000 supports all bitrates, I suggest you let it transfer things over at their native bitrate. -Nav

New features include PS3 connectivity and a 'visual player' for music. Apparently, you have to have a PS3 to download PS One games, which seems a little crazy to me - was the price of the PSP itself not enough? -Nav

Okay good, it's not just me... I'm using a Soundblaster Audigy 2 card w/ Grado Headphones, which to my ears sound pretty good. But I've tried it on high and low bitrate tracks and no luck. I've also searched through the options and there's nothing related to it in there. Still - there was a comment by someone who said they'd done an analysis in Adobe Audition and that it revealed that some higher frequencies were being added. Maybe my ears just aren't sensitive enough?

Alright, I said DSEE makes a slight difference before - and now I take it back. I can't hear any difference at all - I think I must have been imagining it. Am I the only one who can't hear any difference? Or is there something I'm missing or not doing right? -Nav

Just thought I'd share this... I've been fooling around with Connect as it was just released here. It's pretty cool if you don't mind DRM'ed music. But take a look at this screen capture though - see anything wrong with their brassy declaration that this radio station is just about Rock Music? -Nav

Well folks, happy to report that the upgrade to the now-named "Sonicstage CP for CONNECT" - i.e. SS 4.2 - went completely smoothly. No hiccups, no crashes, no lost files and at no point did my computer randomly catch fire. Thoughts so far: - DSEE does make a difference, but it's very slight. Perhaps it's more effective on low bitrate tracks? - Performance seems a bit more responsive - definitely a nice change. So far, way less hard drive thrashing - good job Sony! - Connect seems neat - it did make me wipe my player, but I've been meaning to do that for a while anyway, so I guess it's okay (although it'll take me forever to get everything back on...). But generally, it works, is organised well enough and has pretty good selection, especially considering it's the first day. The radio feature is quite cool too. It's nice to finally have that integrated package like iTunes... - The DRM doesn't seem too heinous - you can use 5 computers, which seems quite liberal. I do have a question - does anyone know if the sample clips are indicative of the sound quality of the download? They sound highly compressed - was just wondering... I know I complain a lot, but so far, I'm quite pleased. It seems that SS versions 3 and up have just gotten better and better. Sweet! -Nav [Edit] I realised this is more about Sonicstage 4.2 than 'CONNECT' - but, since it's all overlapped, I thought I'd leave it unless a mod just moves it...

Thanks for the tip imagine. It seems that you have to delete all the tracks on your device, which is a pain, especially since I have an old USB 1.1 connection... It does seem pretty cool - right now it's a little slow, but I guess that's just opening-night jitters There are some very ominous warnings to back-up your library and disable anti-virus stuff etc. Stuff we've come to expect from SS, but it's still seems odd to me. Well, off to dive in. Pray for me. -Nav

Headphones ATRAC or LAME?

Yeah, Sony should embrace iTunes - but I don't think so. Did anyone else hear the default codec for importing music to the PS3 is AAC? Makes you think... Pata2001, I hear what you're saying about bloat - but despite some muck-ups with version 7, iTunes actually runs well and is generally stable. I'm not saying it's not big or memory-hungry - just that it doesn't slow to a crawl in the way Sonicstage does. And WMP 11 runs like lightning, even on my P4 1.8. I guess I'm still really curious *why* Sony software is so bad - or I guess, more specifically why Sonicstage and Connect were so bad. Like I said, I'm glad Sonicstage is improving - but there's still a long way to go...

Hey DSP - where did that Sonicstage Premium come from? Photoshop? That's interesting... Anyway - I've been wondering about this too. I think that trying to integrate video and photos into Sonicstage would be an unmitigated disaster - I know that there have been vast improvements in Sonicstage, but it's still a nightmare of instability and bloat. Sony seem to be very very slowly getting the idea that software is key to things, but if you look at the numerous screw-ups with the PS3 launch - something that the company's future ostensibly depends upon - I'm a little worried. If new software was released that was actually stable, I think I might consider buying the new walkman - I mean hey, think of all that money I'm saving since I can't afford a PS3! Seriously though - does anyone know *why* Sonicstage and Connect have been such disasters? It really seems strange that such a wealthy, established company is having so much trouble designing stable, easy-to-use software. Is ATRAC really that hard to integrate into software? Anyone have any insight? Couldn't they just hire new and better coders and engineers? -Nav P.S. Oh yeah - there was some chatter about an ATRAC SDK being released, so maybe ATRAC3+ being 'set free' isn't as ludicrous as we used to think.

Hey onez - I had the same problem upgrading from 3.4 to 4.0. Eventually, I had to transcode all the MP3s that I couldn't re-rip or re-download, a less than ideal solution as it meant a drop in sound quality. My suggestions would be to look at the tags of your MP3s or, if you can, just re-rip the files. It's frustrating I know - unfortunately, I wasn't able to come up with a solution. I'm really curious to try this DSEE thing as well, but it's these reports of problems that make me very hesitant to upgrade. Best of luck. -Nav