ATRAC Lossless Question...

[VieloAiposh]

Hello.

I'm Just wondering if anyone can help me out reguarding the lossless atrac format used in sonicstage CP 4.0?

I have the NWA3000, and recently had a few problems, so i decided to restart from scratch and initialise the player. Then went to my pc to find that for some reason it had removed most of the atract files from my pc

already having most of my cd's backed up in high quality mp3, i decided to just import those and convert during transfer to my play, but i find the resulting sound quality to be not all that great, and also, my albums are no longer gapless......

anyway, i'm going to re-rip all my cd's to fix this problem.....but im concerned about using an option ive just seen for lossless ripping.

basically, i want to know if, once its ripped from the cd, can you change your mind about which bitrate you actually want on your player?

for example, if i rip everything in lossless + 352kbps atrac, can i then change my mind and convrt to a lower bitrate, say 132 for the actual transfer.....and if so, would it convert from the lossless part of the file, or from the 352kbps part?

because if ive learned one thing from this whole experience, its that converting from one lossy file to another......not good.

if it takes it from the lossless version, that is fine and ill re-rip it all.....if not, should i just forget ripping from the cd in atrac and move to another lossless format???

any help?

thanks

-x-x-x-

::EDIT::

Also, in october, im going to canada, to see a friend, who's just bought an nwa1000, but she's not very good with computers, so i told her id sort it out for her.

to save me spending my holiday ripping her cd's for her (which lets face it, takes a while), i was wondering if i could just bring the files from my library and import them onto her pc? (we both own alot of the same cd's) i didnt tick the option for copy protection, so there should be no DRM in my files, but i heard that you could still only trasnfer them to and from one computer????

if this is possible.....would i have to bring the files from my PC on a hdd? or cpould i jsut transfer them from my player to her pc?

again, answers much appreciated

-x-x-x-

Edited September 15, 2006 by VieloAiposh

[pata2001]

for example, if i rip everything in lossless + 352kbps atrac, can i then change my mind and convrt to a lower bitrate, say 132 for the actual transfer.....and if so, would it convert from the lossless part of the file, or from the 352kbps part?

to save me spending my holiday ripping her cd's for her (which lets face it, takes a while), i was wondering if i could just bring the files from my library and import them onto her pc? (we both own alot of the same cd's) i didnt tick the option for copy protection, so there should be no DRM in my files, but i heard that you could still only trasnfer them to and from one computer????

if this is possible.....would i have to bring the files from my PC on a hdd? or cpould i jsut transfer them from my player to her pc?

1. Sonicstage will transcode the lossy version, which is in this case, the 352kbps one, not the lossless part. This is why I consider Atrac losless as Atrac useless. It is only usable within Sonicstage. Might as well just rip your music to the desired transfer bitrate.

2. As long as you disable copy protection on the tracks you rip, this should be doable.

Just to save you from any potential problems, unless you need gapless on Sony devices, I would stick with MP3, and not use Atrac.

[VieloAiposh]

okay, thanks for the reply.

well, gapless means alot to me, since i listen to alot of live albums, and also albums thatflow from one track to the next.

but that sounds really bizarre, that it converts from the lossy version......

if i ripped my cd's to another format, say monkey audio (also lossless), if i iomported those into sonicstage, could i then transfer to my device in atract, and would it still be lossless? or is the only way to rip direct from the cd in sonicstage?

thanks again

-x-x-x-

[pata2001]

well, gapless means alot to me, since i listen to alot of live albums, and also albums thatflow from one track to the next.

but that sounds really bizarre, that it converts from the lossy version......

if i ripped my cd's to another format, say monkey audio (also lossless), if i iomported those into sonicstage, could i then transfer to my device in atract, and would it still be lossless? or is the only way to rip direct from the cd in sonicstage?

Sonicstage doesn't support monkey audio. There are reports that it support WMA lossless, so if you need a lossless codec, that's 1 to consider. However, doing that might break gapless, ie. transcoded tracks might not be gapless anymore.

Before, Sony+Atrac is the only option for gapless. Today, new iPods support gapless playback with plain MP3s. Something to consider if you're tired of dealing with Sony and Sonicstage.

[VieloAiposh]

okay, thanks again for the info.

so i think im just gonna go with atrac lossless for my pc and a fairly low rate for my player so that i can fit more on (132 atrac3....i figure, this is the standard that sony uses for its own PAID downloads, so it cant be too bad, having jsut listened to it, its not so bad, and its gapless if i re-rip evrything from the cd's.....which is gonna take a few days).

interesting news on the ipod front......ive never been a fan of ipods though, hehe. i guess they must use some kind of cross fading like winamp does?

i think gapless and listenable quality for the player, and gapless top quality for my pc is the most important to me, so without buying a new player, this is my only option at the mo.

thanks again for helping me.

-x-x-x-

[navsimpson]

Perhaps the reason your mp3s aren't sounding great is that Sonicstage's default for converting to ATRAC is usually 64kbs, which doesn't sound brilliant. Transcoding a high bitrate mp3 to around ATRAC 192kbs should sound okay, though to be honest, I've never really tried it - perhaps the 'double transcoding' will make it sound awful and perhaps that's the problem.

On another note, I think Sony's implementation of lossless makes a lot sense (for once!). I highly doubt I could tell the difference between lossless and 352kbs on my NWHD3 - it sounds good, but it's no high-end piece of kit. To me, it's brilliant that you can keep lossless on your pc - where you might have it hooked up to high-end sound system - and then have a small lossy file to throw onto your DAP (which, at 352kbs, will sound really really good).

Good luck! And an early welcome to Canada!

Nav

[pata2001]

interesting news on the ipod front......ive never been a fan of ipods though, hehe. i guess they must use some kind of cross fading like winamp does?

Nope, no crossfading. It's true gapless, at least with Lame MP3 and iTunes7's AAC. How do I know? Because I have a 5G iPod, and I have tested gapless playback on it.

On another note, I think Sony's implementation of lossless makes a lot sense

I have to disagree. Sony's implementation of Atrac loss/useless is completely flawed. The idea of losless is to keep the original quality at less space, and then you can transcode it to any bitrate you want. With Atrac useless, you cannot do this. Everytime you transcode to another bitrate, instead of using the lossless file, Sonicstage transcode the lossy file, which doesn't make any sense at all. So if you ripped your CDs to Atrac lossless+64kbps, you're screwed, since any transcoding you do will always be 64kbps quality or worse.

[Ishiyoshi]

topic moved to "Technical Discussion".

[navsimpson]

Hey dude, you're of course entitled to your opinion, but to me, Sony's implementation of ATRAC just works i.e. it does exactly what I want it to - keep a lossless copy on my hard drive and a lossy copy on my DAP. Hopefully they'll work something in future releases of Sonicstage that'll work for you too.

Nav

[maggior]

Sonicstage doesn't support monkey audio. There are reports that it support WMA lossless, so if you need a lossless codec, that's 1 to consider. However, doing that might break gapless, ie. transcoded tracks might not be gapless anymore.

SonicStage will import lossless WMA files directly, but will result in ATRAC files with gaps. I learned this first hand.

When I import lossless files (and CDs for that matter) into SonicStage, I convert to wave first and drag them into SS.

And regarding the comment in the thread about IPod now being gapless, this has made me think. I'm not in the market for a new DAP yet, but when I am, I'm sure it will be an IPod at this point. The gapless is true gapless, not some silly crossfade. And it supports the LAME gapless implementation, so you can use outside tools for your trasncoding.

Rich

[hpmoon]

I have to disagree. Sony's implementation of Atrac loss/useless is completely flawed. The idea of losless is to keep the original quality at less space, and then you can transcode it to any bitrate you want. With Atrac useless, you cannot do this. Everytime you transcode to another bitrate, instead of using the lossless file, Sonicstage transcode the lossy file, which doesn't make any sense at all. So if you ripped your CDs to Atrac lossless+64kbps, you're screwed, since any transcoding you do will always be 64kbps quality or worse.

But you ignored his point, which outlined a specific, decided, deliberate scenario where the computer is a playback machine into a high-quality audio system (qua lossless codec) and lower-fi transfers onto portable devices is an added bonus. This is an ideal scenario for many of us, regardless of your critique.

The killer app would be the provision, via either SonicStage or some third-party developer, of a conversion tool to go from ATRAC Lossless to MP3/WMA/etc. That would (hopefully) force the transfer to occur from the Lossless portion of the file.

[The Mule]

As far as I can hear there is no noticeable degradation in sound quality converting mp3 to Atrac3+ at 192Kbps and above. I converted all my mp3's to atrac (keeping the bitrate the same) and havent noticed a difference atall. In some cases the Atrac file ends up sounding marginally clearer.