fatmuttony Posted July 27, 2006 Report Share Posted July 27, 2006 I know that when importing tracks from a CD, I like the Advanced Lossless Atrac 256 Kb/s setting because it's the right trade off between space and quality.However, I don't know what bitrate Atrac to convert my MP3s to before transferring to my RH710. THe RH710 is a 2nd gen unit, and MP3s transferred as is don't sound too good. So, for MP3s that have been encoded on 192 Kb/s, what Atrac should I convert to to get the best trade off between space and sound quality? Does this change with other bitrate MP3s (128 for example)?Thanks in advance.PS - Mods, if this would be better suited in the Software/SonicStage section, please move this there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenmachine Posted July 27, 2006 Report Share Posted July 27, 2006 Transfer as mp3 and use the eq to compensate for the lack of treble. Transcoding is bad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qwakrz Posted July 28, 2006 Report Share Posted July 28, 2006 Yes transcoding is bad but MP3 quality on Gen2's is worse.If you transcode try and go for same or higher bitrate. I usually use 132 or 192 for MP3's. If you go for 64k (Hi-LP) the 2 codecs interfear and it causes some weird effects in the audio. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avrin Posted July 28, 2006 Report Share Posted July 28, 2006 Do not transcode directly. First use Adobe Audition to open an MP3 file as a 32-bit WAV file. Then save this file as a 16-bit WAV. Then import the resulting file into SonicStage, and encode it into ATRAC3plus. 192 kbit/s will do in most cases, but you may want to experiment with other bitrates, if 192 is not enough.Yes, you will lose ID3 tags, but the resulting quality will be a bit better. And also you may at the same time use Adobe Audition to remove gaps from MP3s before saving them as WAVs (via "Open Append" and some manual work). In this way your ATRAC3plus albums will be gapless. AND you may try using GraceNote to get the ID3 tags back, if your MP3s were initially encoded from a commercial CD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dogville Posted July 28, 2006 Report Share Posted July 28, 2006 (edited) I know that when importing tracks from a CD, I like the Advanced Lossless Atrac 256 Kb/s setting because it's the right trade off between space and quality.Check me if I'm wrong but, as far as I know, the Advanced Lossless atrac bitrate isn't 256 kb/s . cheers Edited July 28, 2006 by dogville Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparky191 Posted July 28, 2006 Report Share Posted July 28, 2006 Do not transcode directly. First use Adobe Audition to open an MP3 file as a 32-bit WAV file. Then save this file as a 16-bit WAV. Then import the resulting file into SonicStage, and encode it into ATRAC3plus. 192 kbit/s will do in most cases, but you may want to experiment with other bitrates, if 192 is not enough.Yes, you will lose ID3 tags, but the resulting quality will be a bit better. And also you may at the same time use Adobe Audition to remove gaps from MP3s before saving them as WAVs (via "Open Append" and some manual work). In this way your ATRAC3plus albums will be gapless. AND you may try using GraceNote to get the ID3 tags back, if your MP3s were initially encoded from a commercial CD.Do you really think it makes any difference? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmp64 Posted July 29, 2006 Report Share Posted July 29, 2006 Do you really think it makes any difference?If you are not an audiophile or using high-end headphones, my recommendation is to transcode at HiSP (256) using SonicStage. I doubt very much that you will be able to tell much difference from the original. Just experiment and see what works for you - but going from reasonably encoded 192K MP3s to HiSP should yield pretty good results. Yes, I know this is not the best method for achieving the absolute ultimate sound quality - but it really depends on what kind of music it is, how you are going to listen to it (and where), etc. etc. You must also take into account the amount of time it would take to do some of the other methods described in this post - particularly for large numbers of files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fatmuttony Posted July 29, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 29, 2006 Why is transcoding so bad? Check me if I'm wrong but, as far as I know, the Advanced Lossless atrac bitrate isn't 256 kb/s . cheers Yeah, it's 128. Good catch, my bad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmp64 Posted July 29, 2006 Report Share Posted July 29, 2006 Why is transcoding so bad?Yeah, it's 128. Good catch, my bad.Just because its like making a copy of a copy... the quality gets worse with each ensuing generation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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