skooch Posted April 5, 2006 Report Share Posted April 5, 2006 Hi, I wonder if anyone can help me with this. I have a HD5 and I am using Sonicstage 3.4. All my music is in mp3 format and all works fine. I would like to convert these mp3's to atrac so as to save space on my HD5 so as also to get more music onto it. I know you can right click files in sonicstage and choose convert but i don't want to have to go throgh that many files and convert them manually. Also converting them on the fly as they are transferred to the HD5 takes too long.I tried installing sonys mp3 converter but everytime i start it it says that i have to have sonicstage 2.1 or above to work. I have Sonicstage 3.4 so i have no idea what its problem is. Can anyone sugest a solution to either why the mp3 converter doesn't work or a more efficent way to convert my mp3's. Thanks ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MDX-400 Posted April 5, 2006 Report Share Posted April 5, 2006 I would really, really recommend against transcoding one lossy format to another. You're taking a hit in sonic quality for minimal (IMO) "benefits" in other areas. This is especially true if you're going from MP3 at one bitrate to an even lower bitrate on ATRAC3/3plus--that really isn't a good idea, space savings or not. But just my opinion. If you can really live with the quality reduction I guess that's your suffering, lol.I'm unsure about using the MP3 converter though, as I never have (I didn't even know that existed!) so perhaps someone else might answer.Out of curiousity, how fast is your PC? What CPU do you have and what clock speed is it running. A faster computer will definitely speed things up in the encoding and transcoding depts. though if you're running a fast machine already, you're probably best off looking for a simpler way to convert, as you mention. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skooch Posted April 6, 2006 Author Report Share Posted April 6, 2006 My PC is a P4 3ghz with 1gb Ram so I thinks is ok in terms of processing power. I just thought there would be an easier way to convert but as you say maybe its not worth it. Do users generally leave the format as mp3 then ? I am a little dissapointed that the HD5 is sold as 20gb but you actually can only use 18Gb. I can't beleieve that the player needs 2Gb to play songs ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Stuge Posted April 6, 2006 Report Share Posted April 6, 2006 Do users generally leave the format as mp3 then ? I am a little dissapointed that the HD5 is sold as 20gb but you actually can only use 18Gb. I can't beleieve that the player needs 2Gb to play songs !On the Top of the Box it is written 20GB GO.......It is basically b`coz windows calculate 1mb =1,024kb & Sony or Toshibha calculate 1mb=1000kb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skooch Posted April 6, 2006 Author Report Share Posted April 6, 2006 Oh i see, well that explains the quoted sizes. Sorry to ask again but could you recommend if its worth converting my library to atrac and what kind of savings in terms of file size could i expect to get. Also, does anyone know of a third party mp3 to atrac converter ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Stuge Posted April 6, 2006 Report Share Posted April 6, 2006 First of all there is no other converer other then SonicStage whihc will allow you to Convert Mp3 to Atrac.In which bit rate you have your filesin mp3 ??I don`t recommened to convert your mp3 file s to Atrac unless you need gapless music . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MDX-400 Posted April 6, 2006 Report Share Posted April 6, 2006 Yeah it is not just Sony that does this. Most HDD manufacturers do this as well. In fact it is probably more because the Toshiba HDD in the Sony player is called a "20GB" drive that Sony states it is 20GB, rather than it being Sony that is being misleading themselves.They define 1MB as 1,000,000 bytes instead of 1,024 bytes^2 (a real MB is 1,048,576 bytes calculated by squaring 1024). Examples: My Maxtor 6B200S0 "200GB" SATA drive is really 189GB. Another PATA WD "200GB" drive I have comes up as an actual 186GB. My older WD "20GB" drive is actually 18.9GB, similar to the Sony HD1/3/5 etc.I think to get 1GB you have to square that true MB number as well (multiplying by 10/100/1000 etc. does not work with bits/bytes/megs/gigs as it does with metric units--computer storage is not really a true metric measure I don't think though it still uses metric prefixes). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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