ATRAC bit rates

[danielc]

Hi,

I'm new to MD (loving it by the way) and I would like to know for those of you who have been doing the atrac thing for a while, how true is the 48kbps? Which do YOU recommend? I would love to find out for myself, however, my sonicstage 3.0 rips are distorted. I'm stuck on mp3 until I figure out what's wrong.

Oh, I'm selling all my iPod crap as well... I believe that I'M the one who is actually thinking different.

Thanks a bunch for any help.

[ROMBUSTERS]

Ok so here's how it goes.

As far has HiMD is concerned Atrac 256kbps (also known as HiSP) is the best Atrac sounding compression you can use. While sonicstage does encode Atrac into 320kbps these are as of yet not supported on HiMD.

Here is a list of supported bitrates and my opinion on them.

PCM (1411kbps): CD quality, this has no compression and is by far the best sound quality available.

-My rating: ***** (5/5)

Atrac3+ HiSP (256kbps):Highest quality Atrac compression. Very comparable to the original Atrac (which had a bitrate of 292kbps), this compression is almost impossible to tell apart from the original PCM source.

-My rating: ***** (5/5 because the whole point of compression is to let you store more audio in the same space and for all intensive purposes this sounds the same as PCM)

Atrac3 LP2 (132kbps): Standard LP2 compression from the first days of netMD. Decent for the bitrate although for some plagued by bad artifacts. This is for me (and many) the standard bitrate as it offers one of the best quality vs space

-My rating: *** 1/2 (3.5/5)

Atrac3 LP3 (105kbps): Very similar to LP2 although with a bit more noticeable loss in sound quality. For noisy listening areas still a decent compression.

-My rating: *** (3/5)

Atrac3 LP4 (66kbps): Poor encoding, uses a different joint-stereo encoding scheme instead of the same ones used by LP2 and 3. Sounds pretty garbled.

-My rating: ** (2/5)

Atrac3+ HiLP (64kbps): Very surprising in how good this low bitrate really is. While LP2 still has somewhat of an edge on this, HiLP is perfect for storing a huge amount of music and still enjoying good clean audio.

-My rating: *** (3/5)

Atrac3+ 48kbps (48kbps): Utter garbage. Horrible sound quality for music but damn you can fit a lot on one disc.

-My rating: * (1/5)

Hope that helps

[danielc]

Wow... that answer helps so much, and I thank you. I had a good laugh at your 48k review.

Well, I've updated my sonicstage and I'm going to give your ratings a try.

Thanks again.

[MZ-1]

I too was surprised about the quality of the ATRAC 3Plus at 64K. I really expected something horrible and, to me, it wasn't. Not without it's faults to be sure but I could listen to it and not just think "yuck" all the time.

Paul

[ROMBUSTERS]

thats for the feedback, hope you guess agree at least somewhat with what I have said (although always trust your own ears). Glad I could help. If you have anymore questions just post them.

[tmsnyder]

Hi,

    I'm new to MD (loving it by the way) and I would like to know for those of you who have been doing the atrac thing for a while, how true is the 48kbps? Which do YOU recommend? I would love to find out for myself, however, my sonicstage 3.0 rips are distorted.   I'm stuck on mp3 until I figure out what's wrong.

Oh, I'm selling all my iPod crap as well... I believe that I'M the one who is actually thinking different.

Thanks a bunch for any help.

←

So if I record line-in on a regular 74 minute minidisc at SP with my Sony MZS1 S2 Sport (here's a page on it http://www.minidisc.org/part_Sony_MZ-S1.html ) what bitrate is this?

[The Low Volta]

So if I record line-in on a regular 74 minute minidisc at SP ... what bitrate is this?

well, you've actually answered your own question: SP, so 292kbps Atrac (but it seems that Rombusters didn't mention this one as he answered with HiMD in mind...well actually he did "the original Atrac (which had a bitrate of 292kbps)" but only as a reference)

(there is also fake SP @ 132kbps so actually disguised LP2, but that only is the case when doing a PC->usb->NetMD/HiMD transfer)

[danielc]

thats for the feedback, hope you guess agree at least somewhat with what I have said (although always trust your own ears). Glad I could help. If you have anymore questions just post them.

←

I'm using the HiSP for ripping cd's, however, I'm going to try the HiLP for that as well. I've been capturing from the digital satellite with HiLP and it sounds incredible.

[tmsnyder]

well, you've actually answered your own question: SP, so 292kbps Atrac (but it seems that Rombusters didn't mention this one as he answered with HiMD in mind...well actually he did "the original Atrac (which had a bitrate of 292kbps)" but only as a reference)

(there is also fake SP @ 132kbps so actually disguised LP2, but that only is the case when doing a PC->usb->NetMD/HiMD transfer)

←

Ok, thank you.

Is it just me, or does a MD at 292kbps sound way way better than an mp3 recorded at 256kbps?

[ROMBUSTERS]

Ok, thank you. 

Is it just me, or does a MD at 292kbps sound way way better than an mp3 recorded at 256kbps?

←

Atrac SP has reached revision 4.5 Type-R (i believe thats the latest) and is almost indistinguishable from the original

[greenmachine]

Above a certain bitrate virtually all psychoacoustic codecs can reach (very close to) total transparency, although the for low power consumption optimized Atrac usually seems to need some extra bits.

[jonny mac]

I mostly use LP2, as Rombusters stated, it's a good compromise between quality and space. I have some discs recorded at HiSP (through optical) for really good quality listening but when I'm on the move LP2 does just fine and I can't tell it from any higher bitrate. I would recommend it for the bulk of your recording

[tommypeters]

I mostly use LP2, as Rombusters stated, it's a good compromise between quality and space.  I have some discs recorded at HiSP (through optical) for really good quality listening but when I'm on the move LP2 does just fine and I can't tell it from any higher bitrate.  I would recommend it for the bulk of your recording

←

Is there any special advantage in using optical, will the fast USB transfer give a lower quality sound? (as I understand it the Hi-SP mode isn't "fake" as the SP mode is, when transferring by USB) Or is it just that your source isn't CD?

[ROMBUSTERS]

some people feel that the units themselves have better encoders than the PC software.

others believe that the software codecs have finally surpassed those found on the units (myself included)

so its all in your opinion

[tommypeters]

Of course, I didn't think about the encoding.

One thing I have noticed though, is that you can get better result playing a CD from the HD (ripped by EAC) than directly from the CD-ROM unit. That difference is only noticeable with good speakers/connected to a Hi-fi system, so I'm not sure it will make any difference when converted to Hi-SP.

Regardless, the speed when using SonicStage and also the help from CDDB is worth a lot and I will go the PC route.

[FlameGrilled]

Really, all the ATRAC specific stuff has been covered, so i'll talk generic stuff to close with...

At the end of the day, whether you go with (for any individual audio instance) for high rates, low rates, the lesser or better (a matter of opinion) codec, is very much down to needs and results.

Without getting into the nitty gritty, it's pretty obvious with some audio instances that they aint ever gonna compress to low-rates without being perceptibly destroyed or damaged to the point they become not comfortable to listen to.

If you are talking about not using the MD as a 'glorified walkman', aka not using real SP mode (74/80 mins per disc on MD/NetMD)/CDP substitute, then you can find good enough (for the masses anyway) results for a lot of commericial music-factory audio (aka the chart stuff) can be got with 105K or 132K ATRAC3 (MDLP24 i think they translate to, in old MD money).

Actually, i think the connect store used 105K ATRAC3 as it's generic compression for it's downloads (makes sense, that works for all NetMD and Hi-MD units and ATRAC CD walkmans and flash players).

But there is no rule that says you gotta use one rate only per disc, if working with NetMD/Hi-MD (can't recall old-money MD.. was a while since i used an older pre-Net device).

The audio defines, in absoulte terms, what is necessary in bit-rate terms to get the best reproduction accordin to the encoding analysis.

However, many in the masses, can find they can accept a better space-saving compromise than the literal interpretation of needing a high-rate may indicate.

So, simply, treat each audio instance you add to the disc recording, as an individual entity for encoding, and use whatever rates combination per disc gives you the desired balance between stored running time and quality

For audiobooks, a lot of those will happily go into ATRAC3PLUS 48/64K, 64K being comfortably on the side of caution, but again.. not all audiobooks are speech heavy, so the incidental music etc that may be included may alter what is percevied as necessary

Use yer best tools, the Mk1 ear and Mk1 brain, and 'play it by ear' so to speak.

Or if you can spare the time, do like i do - everything i import for transfer (irrespective of CD, analog, lossy or lossless source) gets encoded to each bit rate for each audio instance. They are then grouped (in the library) as you would do, but keeping bit-rate related versions together.

So what you get, at a slight archive cost, is a version to suit every running time combo .. and a pre-gened file to suit ready to send to the MD or ATRAC CD or flash player.

You also get the advantage of being able to do back-to-back comparisions of each encoding take, and weed out the combos that are totally useless

What's left, is a nice flexible working set of pre-encoded files

[Alexx]

I use Hi-LP mostly: however i do know there are certain lackings with it.

I also use retro LP4 because i think its remarkably pleasant to listen to