Sad, Happy, Sad. A little annoyed. Poor ATRAC

[mr.polley]

This is my first post so bare with me, I have a lot to say. .

Well I bought a NW-A1000 6GB back when they first came out. When I recieved it I automatically loved it just because of the physical design, it was beautiful. When I loaded up the software, yes I did find it took a bit more advanced use to get it working. Two issues I found, Sonicstage doesn't have an independent volume control (uses windows volume control) and also the fact that the music store was a bit restrictive with its music (can only transfer so many times unless you record it to CD), although to me those are minor issues. The second thing I found amazing was the ATRAC facility, to be able to convert tracks down to 1MB-3MB (64kbps) and still get the quality of 128kbps mp3's..... well, more tracks for my space .

Unfortunately a year down the line I dropped my Walkman in a puddle..... was a very sad day. So for another 2-3 years I didn't have another Sony Walkman as I was bought a new Apple IPod for the next christmas.... I had to get it sent off for repairs three times though. I so missed my Walkman. So much that a year ago I bought a NW-A816 4GB... I couldn't wait to get home and use Sonicstage again. What I didn't realise was that Sony had dropped Sonicstage for the first time on this Walkman line and the shop I bought it from was still advertising that it could play ATRAC.... I was really gutted and annoyed. Although I have kept it to this day as it is reliable (unlike some another top selling brand) and it has some solid features.

Today I have decided to buy a NW-A3000 off ebay for

[Stuge]

nope ,I don't see myself using atrac again .I was too much a hassle while sharing music and stuff .

Atrac is dead in other parts of the world and I don't see Sony will invest any money to revive it again .

[StevenQBosell]

It would be awesome if Sony removed the 'proprietaryness" of it; The fact that i can only use Sonicstage to burn the files is awful. An Atrac file CD burned via Sonic, it works. Burned via any other burning program, unreadable files.

Burning an AUDIO CD takes forever on Sonicstage; i'm not talking about my burner, I'm talking about Sonicstage itself taking forever to redbook the files, or whatever it's doing. It's way easier for me to wav my Atracs, then burn them on a much faster burner...

Atrac would be awesome, if it wasn't proprietary

[Wilsy]

ATRAC was a superb compression format in my opinion. By far the best I ever heard.

I would go as far to say that Atrac at 132kbps (I believe that was LP) was superior to 320kbps MP3 on my NWZ-E455.

It is a huge loss to me. Think of these geeks in the lab slaving away at improving it for years and then seeing it die forever. I think it should be made public, open-source. Sony have nothing to lose by doing that.

I just don't like the MP3 players as much as minidisc either. Just recently an album disappeared from my player without warning. And I have a perfectly good minidisc player from 2002 but no software to support it. I suppose the old style players with the replacable batteries lasted too long. Now we will have to buy a new MP3 player every 2 years or so and in this way benefit the economy.

[NickyJay]

ATRAC was a superb compression format in my opinion. By far the best I ever heard.

I would go as far to say that Atrac at 132kbps (I believe that was LP) was superior to 320kbps MP3 on my NWZ-E455.

It is a huge loss to me. Think of these geeks in the lab slaving away at improving it for years and then seeing it die forever. I think it should be made public, open-source. Sony have nothing to lose by doing that.

I just don't like the MP3 players as much as minidisc either. Just recently an album disappeared from my player without warning. And I have a perfectly good minidisc player from 2002 but no software to support it. I suppose the old style players with the replacable batteries lasted too long. Now we will have to buy a new MP3 player every 2 years or so and in this way benefit the economy.

Soon you will be able to have open-source Atrac3plus available without the need for Sonicstage. They're working on a windows version for it now. Look in the software section of the forum.