Format advice

[Tim]

Afternoon all.

A couple of days ago I got my NWA3000, as a bigger replacement for my rio carbon which had an unfortunate meeting with a large amount of water. At the same time, I'm going through my cd collection (approx 300 cds) and sticking them on my new hard drive since there's space for them now. I got about a third of the way through before the accident, ripping them as WMA.

I guess the question is: what format would you recommend that I use for the remaining cds? It seems the options are WMA, MP3, ATRAC. What would you say was best for me, bearing in mind optimal compatibility with the player, but also with potential future devices next time my bottle of water leaks on an aeroplane! Oh, and why?

Cheers

Tim

[Guest Stuge]

Tim

Welcome to "AtracLife"

First I would like to tell you that you are going to find a lot of Advantages & disadvantages with Every Codec.So It will be better if you can specify what you want .

If you need better battery life out of your player than Atrac is the best bet .

At low Bit rate like 48kpbs & 64kpbs Atrac is better than Mp3 &Wma .If you want to squeeze more music onto your player .At Higher bit rates difference is not that much.

If you want to exchange music with other people than Mp3 is the best bet .As Gym (See Software section of the forum) Allows you to play,save mp3 tracks on different computers.

[pata2001]

Just to add on:

If compatibility and future usability concern you, go with MP3. There is no way telling the future of Atrac (and the fact that it is more difficult to transcode Atrac to other format). MP3 is pretty much the universal standard for compressed music.

If you need to squeeze more space, before going to other codec, I would still consider Lame MP3 with --preset medium or -V 5 setting.

If gapless music is a must, then go with Atrac. Sony players (except some AtracCD devices) play Atrac gaplessly. WMA is gapless, but I doubt the A3000 can play it gaplessly since no other WMA capable DAP could (except the Rio Karma).

[Guest Stuge]

Just to add on:

If compatibility and future usability concern you, go with MP3. There is no way telling the future of Atrac (and the fact that it is more difficult to transcode Atrac to other format). MP3 is pretty much the universal standard for compressed music.

I totally agree with You Pata2001 .

Tim ,If you thinking about Future than forget about battery life & Gapless playback.

[chriswyatt]

Personally, I wouldn't recommend WMA. To my ears, the distortion is terrible at lower bitrates, also it uses more processing power than MP3 and gobbles up battery power.

Personally, I think ATRAC3plus is a darn good balance between battery life and sound quality, but for future compatability, I'd go with MP3 (variable bitrate, go for quality over quantity).