How many ATRAC3plus 352kbps per 1GB Hi-MD disc?

[TAF94]

Hi, I'm trying to decide on either a new 2006 sony HiMd player or pcdp. Can anyone tell me how many cd's can fit on 1 HiMd using Atrac3plus 352? Any advice on which has the better SQ? (HiMd or PCDP)

[1kyle]

Hi, I'm trying to decide on either a new 2006 sony HiMd player or pcdp. Can anyone tell me how many cd's can fit on 1 HiMd using Atrac3plus 352? Any advice on which has the better SQ? (HiMd or PCDP)

You can get 7 1/2 hrs approx on a HI-MD disk at HI-SP quality (256)

That's roughly 8 CD's.

IMO HI-SP is 99.9% good quality enough for ripping most commercially available CD's you get these days. I'm not sure about the sound quality with PCDP but the general consensus is that the current version of ATRAC3+ given a decent bit rate (256 for HI-SP is fine) is very good indeed.

One thing I have noticed in the last few years is that the general sound quality from commercial CD's seems to be poorer than it used to be --maybe this is because a lot more people are used to poorer quality music available from Download services or used to listening to MP3's made from appallingly low bit rates and the CD producers are trying to make their sound similar to these. (We've come full circle).

A few exceptions such as some classical music and the SACD format -- which won't really get off the ground as there is hardly a market at all for another CD format which is incompatable with existing equipment and above al;l can't be played on a computer --so no ripping.

To get the best quality on your MD -- rip the CD's in ATRAC3+ Lossless (these can be converted Losslessly into WAV if you want later) and then use SS to transfer the tracks to your MD at the highest bit rate.

Cheers

-K

[The Low Volta]

To get the best quality on your MD -- rip the CD's in ATRAC3+ Lossless (these can be converted Losslessly into WAV if you want later) and then use SS to transfer the tracks to your MD at the highest bit rate.

actually to get the best quality on MD, rip the CD's in the bitrate you will use on the MD (or in the lossless with bitrate you will use on MD) as each transcoding from the A-lossless file will use the lossy part (in the bitrate you chose) and will induce lossy generational degradation...

If you really want to build a lossless library that can be used in SS and can be converted to each bitrate of atrac without unecessary quality degradation and you don't care about proprietary codecs use WMA-lossless! This does give you all advantages and it's main disadvantage (the proprietary codec) is also present with atrac

but please Sony just make SS work with flac and/or wavpack... that would be brilliant indeed

[MZ-1]

I can get 5 1/2 hours with 352kbps on MZ-RH10, with a few MB to spare.

Paul

[TAF94]

actually to get the best quality on MD, rip the CD's in the bitrate you will use on the MD (or in the lossless with bitrate you will use on MD) as each transcoding from the A-lossless file will use the lossy part (in the bitrate you chose) and will induce lossy generational degradation...

If you really want to build a lossless library that can be used in SS and can be converted to each bitrate of atrac without unecessary quality degradation and you don't care about proprietary codecs use WMA-lossless! This does give you all advantages and it's main disadvantage (the proprietary codec) is also present with atrac

but please Sony just make SS work with flac and/or wavpack... that would be brilliant indeed

Could you please explain about using WMA-lossless? You're saying WMA-lossless is better than Atrac3plus lossless? You can hear a difference??

[The Low Volta]

Could you please explain about using WMA-lossless? You're saying WMA-lossless is better than Atrac3plus lossless? You can hear a difference??

nope you (nor I) can hear a difference between lossless files (unless they are faulty)... they are exactly the same as the CD, hence lossless, no audio quality is lost.

but, A-lossless comes in bitrates (which is utter nonsense for a lossless file)... it actually pairs a lossy file with the bits that were cut out to create the lossy part. Both together are lossless, but only the lossy part is used if you do anything with the A-lossless file unless playing it directly in SS or reconversion to wav. Transfer to MD, even when to a different bitrate than first specified will use the lossy part with the subsequent audio degradation that comes from transcoding lossy files.

so WMA-lossless isn't 'better': it sounds the same and it still is a proprietary format (from micro$oft) but at least it is always really 100% lossless (unlike A-lossless as I mentioned above) and it also plays fine in SS (unlike non-proprietary lossless formats as flac/wavpack/...)

[danielbb90]

A-lossless comes in bitrates (which is utter nonsense for a lossless file)...

Yup I agree with you there!

[jonny mac]

To answer the question you originally posed: MD will sound better if you plan to use compressed music because the ATRAC bitrate can go up to 352 kbps while ATRAC CDs can only be burned at a maximum bitrate of 256 kbps. If it's not an ATRAC CD player then there will be next to no difference between a good CD player and MD. I would suggest MD as it's more flexible, managing discs is easier and any ATRAC bitrate from 192 upwards sound fantastic.