Quickly convert MP3 to Atrac

[gpdeering]

Hi All:

Is there a quicker way (e.g. software utility) to convert MP3 files to Atrac (any bitrate)?

I'm aware of Sony's utility (from their support website) to conveniently convert Atrac files to MP3. (Of course, it requires that SonicStage be installed first.) I'm hoping for a similar solution that will go the opposite way, MP3 to Atrac, without having to launch SonicStage.

Does such a utility exist?

Thanks,

gpdeering

[Guest Stuge]

Welcome to AtracLife!

see here

http://www.atraclife.com/downloads/details.php?file=101

[gpdeering]

Thanks for the link.

That might work with my NW-E507, but I was hoping that the utility would not require me to plug in any Atrac device first.

I'd like to:

1. download some free podcasts, which are in MP3 format,

2. quickly convert them to the Atrac and back onto my Desktop,

3. export the Atrac files at a later time to any Atrac device I want (PSP: drag-n-drop in Windows Explorer; Minidisc via SonicStage, NW-E507 via SonicStage)

--gpdeering

[pata2001]

Why would you want to do that? The E507 supports MP3 just fine, so simply transfer the MP3 as is and spend your time listening to the podcasts instead of wasting time transcoding them to Atrac. You can always set Sonicstage to automatically transcode everything to Atrac during transfer.

[gpdeering]

I can't argue with your logic.

Initially I thought that Atrac3plus 64kbps was a smaller file than an 80kbps MP3. It is, but not by a significant amount. The MP3 is about 34MB in size, and it's reduced to about 27MB.

I'm probably wasting more time than it's worth to save a few MB's per podcast.

However, one more question:

Are there any utilities out there to quickly add track marks to an MP3? For example, the 34MB podcast is almost an hour long. It would be nice to slice it up, not into individual files, but into 3- or 4-minute tracks. (SonicStage had a manual process for this, which was too time-consuming.)

Thanks.

gpdeering