NWZ series, where's the ATRAC support?

[RobA]

I can't find anything about ATRAC support for these new walkmans. I can't imagine sony dropping ATRAC, there was nothing wrong with it. It's more energy saving and sounds better at lower bitrates. Is it really true? Do these new walkmans really not support ATRAC?

[Ascariss]

http://www.sonystyle.ca/commerce/servlet/P...th=46881n100363

Music playback function

Supported Audio Formats

MP3 / WAV / WMA / AAC

No atrac support. sony has hinted at dropping drm and software, therefore sonicstage and atrac, there is no suprise here.

as there being nothing wrong with it? perhaps if you encode directly to atrac, but re encoding mp3 to atrac is useless and stupid, no other stores except sony's sold atrac I never used atrac on my sony, except the minidiscs, but that is because I had to there, all my files on my sony's are now mp3 and always will be.

drm for the suck.

[matty84]

I wouldn't agree totally I really liked the ability to convert files when transferring across to a portable device to save space and the quality of 64kbps Atrac wasn't bad from my perspective for listening on a portable device. My files too are mp3 but I have a converted library in atrac format and i dont think mp3 at such bitrates can touch atrac...

[Akai Kenshi]

There's nothing wrong with ATRAC, except for that it's a marginalized format. Sony could have opened it up and released an SDK, but they probably didn't think it was worthwhile.

Nero Digital AAC sounds just as good anyway. I know it's a pain to re-rip all your CD's, I have to do it too. But you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

[ceres]

There's nothing wrong with ATRAC, except for that it's a marginalized format. Sony could have opened it up and released an SDK, but they probably didn't think it was worthwhile.

Nero Digital AAC sounds just as good anyway. I know it's a pain to re-rip all your CD's, I have to do it too. But you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

pcmag claims that the new F device also does wma lossless. If it does lossless it might also do wma pro.

[pata2001]

I can't imagine sony dropping ATRAC, there was nothing wrong with it. It's more energy saving and sounds better at lower bitrates. Is it really true? Do these new walkmans really not support ATRAC?

Yes, it's true. Atrac is outdated, propietary, and Sony cannot even put full support on their devices. Speaking of lower bitraters, HE-AAC provides better quality, and highly supported in the cellphone market.

[RobA]

On this page: http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores...6&langId=-1

It states that the 8GB NWZ-S618 stores 5050 songs. In what format and at what bitrate? Anyone know?

[gotthat]

during early 2007 up until now, Sony has shown us five daps that can do drap and drop with no atrac support, they are the NWD-B player, two of the NWZ players , plus the two CE-PMX players. SS and atrac never got enough support, people attacked it pretty harshly, well anyway they don't have to do that anymore, cause there is no more ss and atrac to blame, maybe they can find some new reasons now to have a go at sony

The bitrate which Sony talks about is MP3 128, as labelled on the Sonystyle Hongkong specification, they now have the NWZ-S61XF player as well with a combo deal

Edited September 1, 2007 by gotthat

[Akai Kenshi]

On this page: http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores...6&langId=-1

It states that the 8GB NWZ-S618 stores 5050 songs. In what format and at what bitrate? Anyone know?

"Calculated on 4 minutes per song @ 48kbps in the MP3 format, not including videos or photos. Other playable audio file format song numbers and times may differ from MP3 format."

48kbps?? Gross.

But yeah, footnotes are your friends.

[RobA]

"Calculated on 4 minutes per song @ 48kbps in the MP3 format, not including videos or photos. Other playable audio file format song numbers and times may differ from MP3 format."

48kbps?? Gross.

But yeah, footnotes are your friends.

48Kbps mp3? Wow thats like listening to nails on a chalkboard. This is why I'm pissed about them dropping ATRAC. An ATRAC3 file at 132kbps sounded the same to me as 192kbps MP3, and ATRAC3+ 64kbps sounded the same as MP3 128kbps. This saved me space.

[rajveggi]

i really don't mind atrac support or not. But to your question, sony has provided the answer clearly at 128kbps in the MP3 format

http://www.sony.ca/sonyca/view/english/cor...8FEA12662.shtml