GigaJuke capabilities

[sfbp]

I have been looking at the specs for the so-called :GigaJuke: line, whose last produced model is the NAC-HD1 (NAC-HD1E in Europe).

Does anyone here own one and would like to comment on its usefulness/reliability?

Can anyone confirm the hint in the manual (pages 26, 106) that Atrac Audio CD is a fully supported format? Or did they remove the feature and fail to clean up the manual?

Seems like the only thing missing is a CD writer, but that's no big deal since you could transfer things to a PC with same, over network connection. There are other issues (such as the FM and AM sections being unsuited to N.America, but they don't concern me particularly). I *would* be interested to know if the hard disk can be substituted and how it gets formatted - since this will among other things affect the longevity of the device as a whole. There's a hint in this auction that it's possible to replace, but my Japanese isn't very good and the translation brilliantly ambiguous.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

Stephen

[lacobo]

The NAC is a great device. I have stored +300 CD's uncompressed on the harddisk and still there's room for more. If it happens that I'm out of space I can convert my non-music albums (50% of the collection are shows from Dutch comedians) to Atrac 256 and get room again for more. When I bought the device it costed around 650 Euro's, but a few days later the price went down to 350 Euro's. I asked if I could get back the difference and... the shop agreed and I got 300 Euro's back! So I bought a nice LCD screen in a matching color. I have now a 20 inch view of the display. Nice! Only I can't stop pointing the remote to the monitor instead of the NAC

The fact that the NAC can export songs via it's USB port on the front is a very big plus (It can convert tracks from Atrack to MP3 and put them on a USB stick for instance), but probably killed Sony's warm feelings for the Gigajuke. I can imagine that Sony music wasn't very happy with this possibility. The NAC is firmware upgradable via the internet link, but no firmware update has ever come up.

It has it's quirks: Adding album sleeves to it must be done by hand and takes forever. Adding a picture to an album with 8 songs takes a few minutes! Adding the content of a CD on the other hand is easy, but the sequence of the albums can't be changed afterwards. So things get messy if you don't pay attention. I have only a few different artists on the NAC (around 25) and can easily switch between them, but if you have hundreds of different artists it can take quite a while to go from the first to the last.

Recording is easy and programmable when to start and finish. I use it sometimes to record the audio from the TV or other sources. Then extract it to a USB stick and it's ready for use or editing.

All in all I'm very happy with the NAC and I use it often. If it's everyone's cup of tea I don't know, but for me it's the ideal replacement of my minidisc deck.

Bert.

P.S. What is an ATRAC CD? I thought ATRAC was only used on walkmans and minidisc.

[sfbp]

Thanks for the excellent review. When I get rich, say the Bells of Shoreditch.....

P.S. What is an ATRAC CD? I thought ATRAC was only used on walkmans and minidisc.

Atrac CD is Sony's proprietary compressed CD with ATRAC files on it. Very good. But so far NO home audio equipment has ever emerged that plays it. I can play them in my car, on a Sony headunit. I can play them on a CD walkman with the right characteristics. One day the #linux-minidisc project may be able to decipher the encryption. But for now I would simply love to know if the NAC will read the disks.

Sadly (most disagree with me here) Sony scrapped Atrac CD's in 2008 along with the rest of ATRAC pretty much. It supports all data rates including both Atrac3 and Atrac3+ (HiMD) without further conversion of codec, so the quality is as good as whatever ATRAC you already had. In the car it is like having HiMD.

(meanwhile I have a project going to add SP/DIF output to any HiMD portable to try to catch this format "isolation" from the other end. Like most people I don't want to store stuff in an unplayable format).

You can make an atrac cd from SonicStage if you still have a copy (or even if you don't). I would be most intrigued to know if it plays.

Stephen

[sfbp]

The fact that the NAC can export songs via it's USB port on the front is a very big plus (It can convert tracks from Atrack to MP3 and put them on a USB stick for instance)

{

still hoping you might be able to manufacture and try an Atrac CD. Worst case (you don't have a PC or Sonic Stage) I can make one and send it to you.

}

Here's an even more burning question (after reading the manual some more): are the tracks which you create by compression to ATRAC, truly exportable? It talks about encrypted oma files, but not clear to me if this means songs legally downloaded with mega-encryption built in (CONNECT or Mora or whatever), or whether this is the default similar to what SS does on upload to itself. If there's no way to get the unencrypted files off there then I am wwwaaaayyy less interested in this device.

Stephen

[lacobo]

{

still hoping you might be able to manufacture and try an Atrac CD. Worst case (you don't have a PC or Sonic Stage) I can make one and send it to you.

}

Here's an even more burning question (after reading the manual some more): are the tracks which you create by compression to ATRAC, truly exportable? It talks about encrypted oma files, but not clear to me if this means songs legally downloaded with mega-encryption built in (CONNECT or Mora or whatever), or whether this is the default similar to what SS does on upload to itself. If there's no way to get the unencrypted files off there then I am wwwaaaayyy less interested in this device.

Stephen

Hi Stephen. I'm sorry to tell you that the NAC-HD1E doesn't read ATRAC CD's. I've installed SonicStage CP 4.3 on my laptop and created an ATRAC CD. The NAC won't read it. Comes with the error No MP3? So it can read MP3 CD's. And there's more bad news: You can't export ATRAC files at all (exept when you connect an A808 walkman), only MP3 up to 256 bps.

Bert.

[sfbp]

Hi Stephen. I'm sorry to tell you that the NAC-HD1E doesn't read ATRAC CD's. I've installed SonicStage CP 4.3 on my laptop and created an ATRAC CD. The NAC won't read it. Comes with the error No MP3? So it can read MP3 CD's. And there's more bad news: You can't export ATRAC files at all (exept when you connect an A808 walkman), only MP3 up to 256 bps.

Bert.

Thank you so much for checking. When I sit down to think about it I must conclude that a PC running Sonic Stage is probably more powerful, then. Especially with large, offboard hard drives on Firewire (or ESATA) and the .oma files decrypted and accessible to the whole LAN. Now it remains to be seen if I will try to put an existing machine up there next to my MD deck, or simply buy one of these tiny-footprint jobs they are selling at the store - the guy was claiming it has a standard motherboard with a couple of PCI slots, too.

Everyone has told me the same thing... AtracCD is a route to nowhere. I enjoy it my car, though.

Stephen

[bobt]

Stephen, glad you like ATRAC CD's, most of us switched to MD to get away from the limitations of CS, their size, fragility etc. Have you tried any of the hard drive Sony units, they hold more music than MD, and still sound good, you just can't record with them, DL only., unfortunately all that means to me is more stuff to buy, could be worse, could be an expensive hobby?

Bob

[sfbp]

Stephen, glad you like ATRAC CD's, most of us switched to MD to get away from the limitations of CS, their size, fragility etc. Have you tried any of the hard drive Sony units, they hold more music than MD, and still sound good, you just can't record with them, DL only., unfortunately all that means to me is more stuff to buy, could be worse, could be an expensive hobby?

Bob

To me the main thing I look for is sheer music quality, which ATRAC seems to deliver. I have yet to have a satisfying aural experience with any form of MP3, the bit rate not making that much (if any) difference to the "inequities" in the sound I hear. It's just about ok for recorded speech and even then sounds kindof "tinny" whereas the ATRAC codecs seem to be just about perfect for most music (I don't listen to pop at all) even at 66kbps (I don't have extensive experience with 64kbps but I understand it should be as good or better). MP3 is convenient when the range of bitrates enables things that simply don't resolve, spacewise, to the media I want (excluding a hard disk which has all sorts of other problems, in my view).

Another reason for settling for AtracCD is that noone will steal them from my car, I would think. I had $400 worth of real CD's pinched before I started along this road by getting the MD changer. They would have fitted on 3 or 4 Atrac CD's at the most, which would have been easily re-generated.

Like many other folks I don't want a portable player in the car, simply because it's one more thing to have to keep track of as I get in and out of a car... and one more thing to be stolen (if I leave it there). Not to mention all the hands-free debate that is going on right now, as MVD's rightly toughen up on what you are allowed to do safely in a vehicle when moving.