atrac lossless to wav

[caveman]

Hi all.

I am using SonicStage 3.4. I have a question about atrac lossless. I have searched the forums but could not find an answer. Normally, I just use EAC and LAME to make my VBR mp3s but there are a few albums that I want gapless on so I convert those to Atrac. I would like to future-proof my rips as much as possible (in case on day I am no longer using a Sony player). Thus, I rip into Atrac Lossless with a 352 kbps device transfer setting.

I have read that if I would want to transfer this file at a different bit rate, SonicStage converts the compressed copy and not the lossless version (why, oh why?). However, if I want to use the "convert to wav" option of SonicStage, which file will be converted- the lossless or the compressed? Obviously, I would hope it's the lossless.

As I stated, I would like to rip into lossless so that if I need to make mp3s (or other formats), I can just convert the lossless file to a wav and then compress that. But, it is kind of pointless if I am just ending up recompressing an already compressed file.

Thanks,

Paul

[pata2001]

There is an easier way. EAC can backup your AudioCD into an image (1 big wav file and a CUE sheet). This truly preserve gapless (trackmarks are recorded in the CUE sheet), and 100% non propietary (it's a WAV file). To rip to Atrac, MP3, etc, all you need is Daemon tools (freeware) to mount the image (CUE sheet) as an audioCD. Backup is easy, just burn the wav file and cue sheet. DVD blanks are so cheap now, there's little reason to go lossless, especially a propietary format like Atrac.

[caveman]

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried that method and it's probably the method I'll continue to use. The reason I was trying to do lossless was to have smaller files on my hard drive that still preserved the CD. Have you converted any images to FLAC?

Thanks again.

Paul