lukpac Posted March 26, 2020 Report Share Posted March 26, 2020 I just got an MZ-M200 and am looking to archive my collection of recordings I made with my MZ-R700 in SP/ATRAC1 mode. I started using SonicStage, which was working well enough, but then I realized it was transcoding everything to ATRAC3plus. I subsequently found this blog entry which describes how to transfer the raw ATRAC1: https://www.w00fer.nl/blog/atrac1-upload-to-pc-and-playback-in-vlc/ That mostly works, but I've run into a few issues: - When uploading files using QHiMDTransfer, the resulting filenames are in the format [Title].aea. It would be very helpful if the filenames started with the track numbers. Is this possible via QHiMDTransfer, or possibly some other program? - When opening the AEA files in Audacity or converting them in Foobar2000 (both using FFmpeg), the first ~0.05s of each track don't match the original recording. It appears as if they start on silence, and then fade up to the correct level. Opening the ATRAC3plus OMA files from SonicStage seems to have the same issue (the WAVs generated from SonicStage are fine, however). Is this a known bug in FFmpeg? Is there any other option for converting to PCM without this issue? Thanks for any help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfbp Posted March 26, 2020 Report Share Posted March 26, 2020 You're going to end up converting them no matter what, as there is no codec that plays ATRAC1. You may as well allow the software/firmware to give you Atrac3+. If you don't you're likely to end up with something worse. ATRAC is inherently a 24-bit format and I don't think QHiMDTransfer solves that problem when converting to 16-bit wave files (which you can also do with Sonic Stage). They also never solved the problem of tracks that didn't start on a cluster boundary, which may be what you're seeing with the conversion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lukpac Posted March 26, 2020 Author Report Share Posted March 26, 2020 34 minutes ago, sfbp said: You're going to end up converting them no matter what, as there is no codec that plays ATRAC1. You may as well allow the software/firmware to give you Atrac3+. If you don't you're likely to end up with something worse. ATRAC is inherently a 24-bit format and I don't think QHiMDTransfer solves that problem when converting to 16-bit wave files (which you can also do with Sonic Stage). They also never solved the problem of tracks that didn't start on a cluster boundary, which may be what you're seeing with the conversion. You are incorrect. FFmpeg plays ATRAC1. QHiMDTransfer doesn't convert to WAV files, it transfers the ATRAC1 files directly. There is no reason why one would want ATRAC3plus in this case, as the original recordings are ATRAC1 and transcoding to ATRAC3plus will necessarily reduce the quality. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfbp Posted March 27, 2020 Report Share Posted March 27, 2020 I don't think that the conversion I mention *significantly* degrades the quality. There are many here who will attest that it's really quite hard to demonstrate loss on ATRAC. Certainly not after 1 conversion. Compare that to the approximations made by *analog* microphones, and on the sonic level it matters less than having a common format for all one's "stuff" that sounds decent. Far more telling than any of the things you mention are sound cards which insist on converting everything to 48,000 sampling rate before playback. I'm very glad that you can play ATRAC1 on your PC. However it cannot be edited. ATRAC3+ can, using Sound Forge, AFAIK the only editor which works. They didn't finish that project (QHiMDTransfer), and it is mostly not useful because of the many deficiencies in the "finished" article. Therefore, I don't use it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lukpac Posted March 27, 2020 Author Report Share Posted March 27, 2020 4 minutes ago, sfbp said: I don't think that the conversion I mention *significantly* degrades the quality. There are many here who will attest that it's really quite hard to demonstrate loss on ATRAC. Certainly not after 1 conversion. Compare that to the approximations made by *analog* microphones, and on the sonic level it matters less than having a common format for all one's "stuff" that sounds decent. Far more telling than any of the things you mention are sound cards which insist on converting everything to 48,000 sampling rate before playback. I'm very glad that you can play ATRAC1 on your PC. However it cannot be edited. ATRAC3+ can, using Sound Forge, AFAIK the only editor which works. They didn't finish that project (QHiMDTransfer), and it is mostly not useful because of the many deficiencies in the "finished" article. Therefore, I don't use it. Whether the degradation is “significant” or not is irrelevant: it still exists. Archiving recordings in their original quality is the goal. Editing doesn’t matter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W00fer Posted March 27, 2020 Report Share Posted March 27, 2020 I have updated my original blogpost which lucpak mentioned in the first post. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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