Music Format

[sushi]

Greetings

I've been wondering which is the best format to keep music on my HDD. All of my music is (like most people's) kept in Mp3 but when I create an MD, SonicStage has to convert this for my NetMD. Would ripping CDs into WAV ot ATRAC speed up SonicStage? I suppose that if I rip in LP2 bitrate and create an LP2 MD wouldn't need anymore converting.

I'm awaiting my first 1st generation machine so I'll probably be using HI-SP but I'll be keeping my NetMD.

I'll end this rant with a summary of the above - how can I speed up SS?

[zerodB]

Like you said, if you rip all of your CDs into SS @ LP2, then SonicStage won't need to convert your music - it will simply transfer straight to your unit.

Plus you won't lose sound quality due to transcoding.

Another option would be to use the LP4 bitrate - it would certainly be faster, in transferring songs, but wouldn't sound as good.

A final method would be to use WMA lossless - rip your music in Windows Media Player, and then import the music into SonicStage. With the latest version of SS, you can opt whether to keep the converted ATRAC files on your hard disk or not - so you can choose to save either time or space. Because you'll be using lossless, you won't incur a quality loss, however your music will take up a lot of space on your hard disk. SS will still need to do a conversion tho, but it might be faster than the MP3 method. The only reason I mention this, is that WMA (lossless) is compatible with most other audio players and audio editors.

However, the quickest and simplest method would simply be to rip to ATRAC3 (LP2/Lp4)

Edited May 24, 2005 by zerodB