How many of you still sticking to Atrac format ?

[Guest Stuge]

Ok ,So I will love to hear from this forum as well .As ,Sony players now supports others format as well .

Go Polling !

[Weaves_]

Stuge,

My plan is to stick with ATRAC, but only until my HD5 hard drive goes, and I cannot replace it myself. When that happens, I will probably go with a Zune 80 and WMA Lossless. Unless Sony comes back to gapless and with larger capacities.

[marcusc]

I also plan to stick with atrac. The other formats just cannot complete with the quality of it. Gapless playback also a big bonus of atrac. Some albums intentionally have no gaps between tracks (eg dance mixes and live albums) and it is nice to hear the album as it was intended to be heard - with no gaps! There is nothing worse than 1 or 2 second gaps right in the middle of a smoothly mixed house or techno complication!

For me, 132kbps atrac3 is far, far superior even to 192kbps MP3. So I can get a lot more albums on my walkman at a quality acceptable to me, than i could with MP3 or WMA.

I am going to have to take very good care of my NW-E015 walkman, because I think it will soon be impossible to get a new atrac3 player here in the UK!!

[Ascariss]

i use mp3 at 320, or wav if I am too lazy to convert a song to mp3

[GRB]

Hi folks, just joined the group, having inherited the A1000 I bought my daughter about 3 Christmas's ago, (She now has a Sony Ericsson phone/camera/MP3 player/tea machine - well, one day!). It's not only ergonomically fantastic, cute as hell and built like a tank (unlike most iPod's) but the sound is excellent. I just voted, I'm sticking with Atrac, I use 128 kb/s to rip and transfer (thus avoiding the extended transfer times if you use different rates) as I find 128 almost indistinguishable from CD. I use the line out into my amp, and back to back with my Philips CD104 CD player (23 years old and still going strong) it's hard to tell them apart, and the differences could be down to line out amps and even leads. I find less than 128 to be distractingly poor, but having said that, I find most MP3 files to be inferior and by 128 it's too awful to listen to. So, Atrac, I will be loyal to you. I cant' quite fit all my CD's on, but as they're all ripped, I can delete and add to the device very quickly, so it's not really a problem. The A1200 would likely solve my "space" problem, but I can live with it. The A3000 is just a tad too big to have the "cute/wow" factor.

[AntiPod]

I use atrac a lot cuz i still need sonicstage with my E507/S706 players. Since i need to use SS, i figured a little converting was not too bad. The advantages of atrac to me are the compressed size, un-compromised sound quality, and it helps saving battery life!

[aob9]

I rip MP3 at 192. I download from emusic at whatever bitrate they supply, usually vbr 320. I once ripped all my collection to atrac 132 and found I could do very little with it. I stream music all over my house and MP3 is the most compatible. Atrac is an excellent codec codec but way to restricted....................my vote; MP3

[Guest Stuge]

Stuge,

My plan is to stick with ATRAC, but only until my HD5 hard drive goes, and I cannot replace it myself. When that happens, I will probably go with a Zune 80 and WMA Lossless. Unless Sony comes back to gapless and with larger capacities.

Replacing Hard drive is of HD5 not a big thing weaves ,its easy .

you can use this guide -.

http://www.atraclife.com/forums/index.php?...pic=627&hl=

[fredman22]

I'm definitely staying with Atrac as long as I can, mostly HiMD. I have a couple that I just mothballed (RH-10, NH-900) as I recently found a new NH600D for everyday use (saving my babies!). I've also gotten an A829 to face the inevitable. After loading and reformatting several times, I've settled on AAC-VBR350. In the A829 this sounds pretty close to A352 on my HiMDs (it only takes up double the space!). My grand plan is to wait for 32Gb or larger players, then import an Atrac one from Japan...:-) Cheers.

[imagine_]

I'm sticking with atrac for any music which I import myself. Does anyone know how much longer atrac will be supported in Japan? Hopefully they will still have atrac3 support so we can just import from there if we still want to use it.

[stargazer_tom1]

Hi,

For my nwz-a818:

I use AAC VBR (nero encoder) with db power amp when i rip my CDs the .5 quality setting. I have done loads of subjective tests with lame mp3 v3.97 on the -V2 setting. I think AAC sounds far better and provides a lower file size . I'm still starved for space though!. Anything i download i usually shove straight on the player ie no transcoding.

I still have my hi md sitting on my desk (nh1) which i don't use unless i want to record "live" sounds (EVP, nature sounds etc). Sometimes i like to rip a few CD's into Atrac3plus 192Kbps and put them on my HIMD and have a listen....i love the sq atrac provides but since sony has phased it out i had to go for the nwz-a818 as my new player.

[dura_]

I stay with ATRAC 256kbs as long as my beloved A808 lives; after that, I'll rerip in lossless, FLAC or WAV, and recompress, not sure to what.

I will probably go with a Zune 80 and WMA Lossless

This sounds like an interesting alternative (allthough I do not like the slow starttime of HD-players).

[mmp64]

I would caution against thinking that, from a sound quality standpoint, ATRAC is "far superior" to MP3. Maybe a poorly encoded MP3. What is probably far superior is the hardware on which you are listening to ATRAC, and the flavor of encoder you are using to rip MP3. I remember years ago comparing my Creative Zen (listening to a run-of-the-mill 160k MP3) to my MZ-NF610 (listening to LP2) and thinking the Creative sounded like crap. On that basis, for many years I said ATRAC was superior to all other codecs. However, if you listen to say, Lame Preset 3 one of the newer Sony players and compare it to HiSP on a high-end HiMD unit, I think you will be very surprised. On the lower end, compare WMA 64 on a newer Sony unit to HiLP on a HiMD or Hard Drive unit. I think those results will surprise you as well.