Music Quality - High Bitrate Mp3 Vs Atrac3

[Clocker]

I'm new to the Md format and am looking at buying an rh910 as soon as they become available. I was disappointed to hear that MD atrac3 recordings are not exactly CD quality, even though you apparently cannot tell the difference.

My question is: Since the Hi-MD are essentially portable drives now and mp3's can be dragged, dropped and played straight up. Is it better too convert your CD's to high bitrate mp3's and then drag and drop them or just use atrac3+?

I'm a perfectionist.

with the new Hi MD formatting of regular 80 minute discs they can hold 305MB of mp3's - yes?

Can someone please tell me if the rh910 has the external batt pack add-on like the rh10?

BTW there is now no way I would consider getting an ipod.

1. The bottom line is if you are going somewhere for longer than it takes to listen too 1 gB of mp3's then you will be going there by car and you will have plenty of room to fit a few extra Hi MD's in your car. This was ipod's only winning argument.

2. How much more stuff can you do with the Hi-MD mp3 format? Hook it up to an amp and you have a party sound system.

3. have you checked what a 40 GB ipod costs?

4. Do you have 40 GB of music that you honestly can't part with?

5. Ipod's battery life leads me to believe that there is no point in makinf a 40 GB model.

6. MD's external battery pack means no voltage converters when I go back packing.

7. Have you held an ipod? They're heavy and bulky. Not quite as portable as they would have you believe.

8. My girfriend only wants an ipod because she's a techno-idiot and she likes the ads. I think this about sums up ipod's "niche" market.

Edited March 12, 2005 by Clocker

[Fray Adjacent]

I'm new to the Md format and am looking at buying an rh910 as soon as they become available. I was disappointed to hear that MD atrac3 recordings are not exactly CD quality, even though you apparently cannot tell the difference.

My question is: Since the Hi-MD are essentially portable drives now and mp3's can be dragged, dropped and played straight up. Is it better too convert your CD's to high bitrate mp3's and then drag and drop them or just use atrac3+?

I'm a perfectionist.

We're not certain yet if MP3 files will be able to be dragged and dropped to the unit (via windows explorer) AND be playable. You can drag and drop them as data, but the info I'm gathering is, you will have to use Sony's SonicStage to copy MP3s to the device to make them playable. It will also envelope them in some form of DRM, disabling playback from the files if you copy them off of the disk to another computer.

We're not sure on that as far as I can tell as of yet.

with the new Hi MD formatting of regular 80 minute discs they can hold 305MB of mp3's - yes?

Yes, approximately 300MB is the capacity when formatted in Hi-MD mode.

1. The bottom line is if you are going  somewhere for longer than it takes to listen too 1 gB of mp3's then you will be going there by car and you will have plenty of room to fit a few extra Hi MD's in your car. This was ipod's only winning argument.

You're right about that. I don't need more than 1GB of music with me at a time, unless I'm travelling.

2. How much more stuff can you do with the Hi-MD mp3 format? Hook it up to an amp  and you have a party sound system.

It will be much more versatile in that you don't have to transcode files to ATRAC3(+), not making you either convert all of your files, or have duplicates in a different format. Yeah, you should be able to plug your player into an amp and use it as a head system.

3. have you checked what a 40 GB ipod costs?

Not recently, but probably more than I'd want to pay for something like that.

4. Do you have 40 GB of music that you honestly can't part with?

My whole MP3 directory, with most of my CDs ripped in 320kbps non variable quality only comes to about 12GB. Definitely not really worth it to me to have almost 4 times as much space on a portable player.

5. Ipod's battery life leads me to believe that there is no point in  makinf a 40 GB model.

Right? What's two weeks worth of continuous audio if the battery only lasts a couple hours... AND is not easily interchangeable?

6. MD's external battery pack means no voltage converters when I go back packing.

Word.

7. Have you held an ipod? They're heavy and bulky. Not quite as portable  as they would have you believe.

True. They seem pretty well made, though. Pretty sturdy. But don't think about dropping one when it's running. That hdd would go bye-bye easily. I've dropped my D600 a couple times while playing, and it kept on going with no ill effect.

8. My girfriend only wants an ipod because she's a techno-idiot and she likes the ads. I think this about sums up ipod's "niche" market.

You may have that right. But if Sony pulls this off, the second and future generations of MD players just might be as stupid-easy as Ipods are.

[ROMBUSTERS]

I'm new to the Md format and am looking at buying an rh910 as soon as they become available. I was disappointed to hear that MD atrac3 recordings are not exactly CD quality, even though you apparently cannot tell the difference.

My question is: Since the Hi-MD are essentially portable drives now and mp3's can be dragged, dropped and played straight up. Is it better too convert your CD's to high bitrate mp3's and then drag and drop them or just use atrac3+?

I'm a perfectionist.

in choosing to go with MP3 or Atrac3+ the main arguments I can see are as follows:

MP3

>lots of encoders, lots of quality

>can be used everywhere

>easy to move around and play with

>not gapless

Atrac

>gapless playback

>better at low-bit rates

>i personally think it sounds amazing i just wish there was a 96kbps mode

>suffers from pre-echo problems (because its gapless) and is not easily moved

with the new Hi MD formatting of regular 80 minute discs they can hold 305MB of mp3's - yes?

yes about 300MB for 80min discs, around 270MB for a 74min disc.