Building a music library

[Trondis]

Hi!

I have used Minidisc as my pocket stereo for at least 10 years. Last year I upgraded to Hi-MD (MZRH600). So I started transferring my CDs via SonicStage. Since then I have also bought a PDA with wireless internet, that I also can use as pocket stereo. And now I am buying a new PC with enough HD space to transfer my entire CD collection.

The minidisk is my preferred device for walks or vacations. But at home, or at places with wifi, I want to use my PDA. If I put my CD collection on harddisk, I can access everything via the PDA. So I am wondering what programs and formats I should use for this. I know of three possible formats for streaming audio to the PDA: MP3, WMA or AAC. As library programs there are plenty, but candidates are Windows Media Player, iTunes, MusicMatch or Nero Digital. MP3 and WMA can be streamed to the PDA via ORB, and AAC can be streamed via Nero Digital. I believe that both MP3, WMA and AAC files can be used by SonicStage to transfer the music to my Minidisc.

So, does anybody have any recommendations here? What library program and format is best? I will use a compressed format (not WMA lossless, for instance), but how will that affect the quality on the atrac3-files that are transferred to the minidisk? For me it is also very important that I will get gapless playback on the minidisk. (I have heard that MP3 introduce some silence after tracks, but is this true for all MP3s?)

best wishes

Trondis

[lecram1971]

Hello,

Sorry but I don´t understand you use your PDA to hear what is playing in your PC or to play files that are in your PC?

Maybe it´s a stupid question, but if you can listen the program that is running in your PC I will suggest to use Sonic Stage as a player, you can create play list, library, etc. Play your colection in Atrac, and don´t need to rip them in another format, again, as MP3, etc.

Now if you need to acces the files from your PDA to play them there, I think MP3 it´s the best, but with gap. Some programs have a pluggin to play or emulate the gapless.

These day´s appears a Pluggin for Winamp to play Atrac files may be (sadly I don´t think yet) theres something that can work in your PDA to play Atrac directly.

[Richard]

Sorry just to clarify - what exactly is the question:

You want to know if you can play Atrac3+ on your PDA? Or you want to know which software program is best to transfer music to your PDA? Or you want to know which transfer program is best for all your devices including Minidisc?

* Moved to Software Discussion section

[Trondis]

Sorry just to clarify - what exactly is the question:

You want to know if you can play Atrac3+ on your PDA? Or you want to know which software program is best to transfer music to your PDA? Or you want to know which transfer program is best for all your devices including Minidisc?

* Moved to Software Discussion section

OK, the plan is:

1) Import my CD's to harddisk in either MP3, WMA or AAC format.

2) Install ORB (www.orb.com)

3) Enjoy the music on my PDA when I have access to wireless internet (in my home, on hotels, airports etc.).

4) Import the files to SonicStage

5) Transfer the files to my minidisk. Then enjoy the music on the minidisk when I take a walk or go for vacation.

The question was, which file format is best for conversion to Atrac3. I suppose that when I use a compressed format (like MP3) as the source, the atrac3-file on the minidisk might be of a lesser quality than if I had started with an uncompressed file. Also, will all MP3-files introduce a gap, and will WMA or AAC do the same? Finally, which library/ripper program is best?

I hope that made it clear.

Best wishes

Trondis

[Sparky191]

The MZRH600 only supports ATRAC. So no matter what you do thats what you're going to have to put on the MD. Its best encoding that from a lossless source, otherwise you will be transcoding and that hurts the sound quality. Though it might be good enough. Only you can decide that.

If you decide you want lossless then your options are limited, and its not a very slick process. If you decide you are happy with transcoding from high bitrate file (MP3's 192-320kps for example) then what you are taking about becomes a lot easier. But for downloading across a wifi connection lossless isn't really an option. May it is with your connections I dunno. Depends on how good/fast your wifi connections are.

I assume what you have is your PC and music libray accessible via the internet. So once you have net access you can access your music. I would have thought that would slow, but I guess if you happy with it, thats all that matters. Thats really not an issue for MD use.

In summary what you are asking is what bitrate and file type is the best compromise for transcoding to ATRAC for MD, (keeping gapless) but is still small enough to access over a net wifi connection to your PC.

You'd have to do some listening tests of lossy files transcoded to ATRAC to decide what bitrate(MP3)>>bitrate(ATRAC) you are happy with.

I don't really know which other formats are lossless. You might ask that on Head-Fi.org.

Edited July 14, 2006 by Sparky191

[Rumz]

I'm not sure if any of those formats will preserve the gapless nature of music with any of the programs you're thinking of, though I haven't tried them. I know mp3 is not gapless (though it seems I've heard of a round about way to get them to be gapless, it just seems like it's not worth the effort to me).

Personally I like mp3-- simply because it works on everything. Gaps are really the only drawback to the format for me. I have iTunes set up to rip and encode using LAME at a pretty high quality setting (though I'm using a Mac-- you might want to use EAC to rip and encode with LAME on a PC). Most people say if your mp3s are above the 192kbps bitrate that they should survive the transcoding process in sonic stage and still sound pretty good, so perhaps you could use LAME at a quality setting of 1 or 2 (or 0 if you want the highest possible, but the files will be bigger).

You could also get a Hi-MD unit that plays mp3s natively

[Trondis]

I'm not sure if any of those formats will preserve the gapless nature of music with any of the programs you're thinking of, though I haven't tried them. I know mp3 is not gapless (though it seems I've heard of a round about way to get them to be gapless, it just seems like it's not worth the effort to me).

Personally I like mp3-- simply because it works on everything. Gaps are really the only drawback to the format for me. I have iTunes set up to rip and encode using LAME at a pretty high quality setting (though I'm using a Mac-- you might want to use EAC to rip and encode with LAME on a PC). Most people say if your mp3s are above the 192kbps bitrate that they should survive the transcoding process in sonic stage and still sound pretty good, so perhaps you could use LAME at a quality setting of 1 or 2 (or 0 if you want the highest possible, but the files will be bigger).

You could also get a Hi-MD unit that plays mp3s natively

For me gapless playback is the most important. Nothing is more irritating than gaps in the music where it shouldn't be. So if all MP3's introduce a gap, I won't use it. I guess that I will have to try out WMA or AAC files then.

best

Trondis

[The Low Volta]

when using WMA-lossless in SS it will introduce gaps on the discs as well, so I'm not sure whether WMA can do gapless