Questions about ATRAC format

[Juancho]

I just discovered the atrac format, and I want to know all about. I use the sonic stage software and is great. good compresion and good sound. But I have some quetions:

1.- I tried to record an atrac cd, but the wait time was so long. is this normal?

2.- what is the diference between atrac and atrac3 plus?

3.- there is a way to listen atrac files in windows media player, winamp or real player?

Thanks

[JSP62]

1.- I tried to record an atrac cd, but the wait time was so long. is this normal?

what is the speed of your cd/dvd rom? i have not made any atrac cds yet. perhaps the write speed is set low for the atrac format.

2.- what is the diference between atrac and atrac3 plus?

not sure

3.- there is a way to listen atrac files in windows media player, winamp or real player?

Atrac is a proprietary format by Sony and cannot be supported by WMP, WINAMP or REAL.

Though someone has been working getting WINAMP to recognize the format so you can play from your DAP. Look in the software forum under SONY_ML

[Ishiyoshi]

Welcome to ATRACLife, Juancho!

For question 2, you may want to visit Sony's very own ATRAC overview website and review Minidisc.org's FAQ section. In addition, do read up "pinned" threads within "Technical Discussion" of the forum; "ATRAC3plus Developers' Interview" is an interesting piece worth reading.

*topic moved to Technical Discussion

[grenert]

1.- I tried to record an atrac cd, but the wait time was so long. is this normal?

Hi, Juancho.

There is a fairly long delay in Sonic Stage where DRM (copy protection) is added to the files prior to burning onto the CD. This takes most of the time. Once burning actually starts, it's about as fast as any other burning program. Since you can't bypass the DRM, there's nothing you can do about the extra delay.

Also, be sure to have the "writing settings" (under Tools -> Options -> Creating a CD) for creating an ATRAC CD set to "standard transfer mode" so that files are not transcoded to a different bitrate for the CD. Otherwise, there will be a much longer delay. If you want it to transcode to a lower bitrate so you can fit more songs on the CD, then you just have to accept the problem. Transcoding is a slow process with any program.

Glad to hear you are enjoying your ATRAC Walkman. I have two, and I really like them. Although it is more of a pain to create the CDs, once you have them, it is much easier to swap CDs than it is to plug in a player and select files to transfer. Plus, I'm not always at a computer when I want to change songs.

Cheers.

-J. P.