Need Advise Regarding ATRAC CDs

[CookieMonster]

I'm new to the board and I hope i'm posting this in the right area - if not sorry .

But anyways.. here's my problem..

I have 3 burned cds and all the cds have atrac files on them. Seeing that my car cd player does NOT play these cds, I am trying to rip them back to my computer so I can re-burn them into a MP3 format.

however , my windows media player can not read the cds when I try to rip them...

Is there any kind of program I can download that reads atrac files so I can rip them back to my computer?

It's very frustrating because these cds were made for me and apparently the person wasn't very smart when he burnt them , so now i'm stuck with 3 cds I can not listen to.

If anyone can help me I would so much greatly appreciate it!!

[pata2001]

AtracCD is a dead end format. It can only be read by AtracCD devices, nothing else. So, there is no way you can "rip" those back. Your only solution is to buy an AtracCD compatible Sony PCDP or CD deck.

[Guest Stuge]

Welcome to AtracLife!

apparently the person wasn't very smart when he burnt them ,

No need to curse anyone ..curse Sony .

[navsimpson]

There is a workaround, but it'll be time consuming. You'll need to download and install Sonicstage 4.0, which, depending on your luck, will either go flawlessly or make you pull your hair out. Then, copy the ATRAC files to your harddrive and import them into Sonicstage. Then, save all the files as .wav files - you should be able to do this in batch. Then find a program that converts wav to mp3 - like CDex - and do a batch convert of the .wav files and then use whatever program you want - heck, even Sonicstage! - to make an MP3 cd.

Nav

[Guest Stuge]

There is a workaround, but it'll be time consuming. You'll need to download and install Sonicstage 4.0, which, depending on your luck, will either go flawlessly or make you pull your hair out. Then, copy the ATRAC files to your harddrive and import them into Sonicstage. Then, save all the files as .wav files - you should be able to do this in batch. Then find a program that converts wav to mp3 - like CDex - and do a batch convert of the .wav files and then use whatever program you want - heck, even Sonicstage! - to make an MP3 cd.

Nav

Nav ,but still you can't extract tracks from Atrac cd .

[navsimpson]

Nav ,but still you can't extract tracks from Atrac cd .

Ah, sorry. I've never actually made an ATRAC cd since I don't have anything that might play one. I assumed that an ATRAC cd was just full of ATRAC files that you could copy and import, like I do on the different computers in my home. More stupid Sony DRM that prevents you from doing this I presume?

Nav

[kerfuffle]

Couldn't you copy the ATK (I think that's the file extension for ATRAC CD tracks), then rename them so that they are OMA files, then import into SonicStage? O.O

[Guest Stuge]

Couldn't you copy the ATK (I think that's the file extension for ATRAC CD tracks), then rename them so that they are OMA files, then import into SonicStage? O.O

NO

[kerfuffle]

Damn, that sucks, then.

[CookieMonster]

well that does sorda suck that i am unable to re-do these into mp3 files .. i have a boombox that plays the cds but im rarely home to play them .. im more on the road than anything lol .. oh wells .. thanks anyways guys

[JustAnUnCoolCat]

Very limited options here..

The simple options for getting content off an ATRAC CD are a whole sum of one :-

Play them back on an ATRAC CD supporting deck - take either the optical or analogue line out from the deck to a PC or portable uncompressed recorder.

Optical link up is preferable, but if using analogue - definately ensure you use Line Out not Phones output.

ATK files are either a discrete ATRAC in a wrapper format files or encrypted ATRAC in a wrapper format files, i can't remember exactly which now (but either equates to the same basic end result) that the decode of was only implemented in ATRAC CD equipment (the few car decks, few indoor hifi setups, a couple of boombox hifi's and the more frequent ATRAC CD Walkmans).

Bearing in mind that if you were (outside of this forum anyway) to get advise about what is essentially analogue-loop type transcoding conversion/capture, you could expect much slapping of the virtual paws and being crapped on from on high over demuxing lossy audio.

But having (using an optical link to both a PC and an Hi-MD and using uncompressed or lossless encoding to record with) recovered content from some old ATRAC CD's (they were burnt using 132K ATRAC3 encodings), there is definately scope to get audio back and reencoded to whatever usable lossy format or to simply capture and make Audio CD's from accordingly.

At the end of the day, how well the captured audio translates into reused audio in a diff format, is really governed by the source.. so dont go expecting say 64K ATRAC3Plus files of an ATRAC CD to be captured and reencoded back to lossy and sound great.. that's gonna somewhat stretch the limits of sanity and creditability if the destination is another hi-ratio compressed output file.

Remember, quality output is governed by tailoring the encoding to suit the content for maximum reproduction - good perceptible quality is really defined as making a good usable output that suits the practical storage and use.

'Tom Kat'