Time taken to transfer tracks in mp3 vs ATRAC

[Hungerdunger]

In another thread a few weeks ago, I mentioned that one of the plus points of the RH1 is that you can save time by transferring mp3s without having to convert them to ATRAC. Bobt, who appears to have a more modern and powerful PC than I, suggested that there shouldn't be much difference in the time taken.

I've just imported a 30 minute Podcast in mp3 format. To transfer it "as is" to the RH1 took 18 seconds, but converting it to 132kbps took 2 minutes, 28 seconds, while converting to 64kbps took even longer at 3 minutes, 22 seconds - 11 times longer than not converting it.

This is a shame, as I'd like to use my other minidisc players more, but often I just don't have the time to convert half a dozen podcasts so I'm stuck with the RH1.

I'd be interested to know what other people have found. If I upgrade to a new and more powerful PC am I likely to find much improvement? (If it helps, my current PC is a Pentium 4 2GHz, with 1Gb RAM, running XP SP3 and SonicStage 4.2.)

[Hungerdunger]

Anyone????

[Avrin]

AFAIK, MP3 files at least take less space on a Hi-MD disk. ATRAC3[plus] files are padded with something, so that you can't put as much music in this format as you can in MP3.

And it's always better to keep the original format and not to do an unneeded lossy-to-lossy conversion.

[bobt]

I'm a child of the 60's, used to spending hours putting 45's and album tracks onto 3 1/2 " 05 5 " portable reel to reel so I could have mobile music. So to me anything faster than real time is a bonus. I haven't done any pod cast's, so I can't comment on time to transcode and download, but on my system Acer 20 ghz 3 ghz ram, AMD Athlon running Vista home, using NH 600 or 800, NH1 or RH1, times seem fast, no stop watch, the ones that seem to take longer are to SP to play in my car deck, but with the connect 2, I can put it on HI-MD or use the HD1 or VG1L, and not have to change a disc in 60 to 80 minutes. which is twice around the island if I keep going!