compatibilty between versions of ATRAC?

[Guest Anonymous]

I have a Sony MDS-JE330, which uses ATRAC 4.5 (according to the equipment browser on this site). I'm looking at getting a MDX-400 for my car, which is only ATRAC 2. Will the car deck play my discs I recorded wtih my home deck, or is ATRAC 2 too old?

[KJ_Palmer]

Yes, all 'standard' ATRAC modes are backwards compatible (ie. stereo and mono). The only thing that won't play are the long-play modes, MDLP2 or 4, but you don't have to worry about that.

[Guest Anonymous]

Thanks for the reply. I was going to get that car deck, but it just went out of my price range (ebay auction). :x

[edwinx]

so does that mean, that a md recorded in the new atrac 4.5 typeS will play back on an old old atrac 2 deck and sound the same or it would have worsen sound quality?

[highlandsun]

It should sound the same. When playing back an ATRAC recording, the hardware doesn't make any decisions, it just has to reconstruct the bits as they were encoded. The improvements in ATRAC versions have all been on the encoding side, where the decisions are made about what bits to allocate to what signals. There may be some exceptions because newer hardware may have used higher precision DSPs than older hardware, but in general any recording will playback identically across all ATRAC hardware.

[edwinx]

cool.

what about the differences in atrac versions? what is the newest one now? the Type S one or?

[mAjEsTiC]

yep...Type S is the latest ATRAC offering from Sony...

[edwinx]

is that the best performing one?

I think the one from sharp is different right? how about aiwa, panasonic, etc?

how many different implementations of atrac is there?

[mAjEsTiC]

sharp use a diff version of Sony's atrac that they developed...Aiwa is under Sony management so i would expect they use the same ATRAC...panasonic use their own one called HDES or something if i recall correctly...i think Sharp's and Sony's are the most advanced atm...Sony having the edge...

[edwinx]

thanks!

[edwinx]

cool.

what about the differences in atrac versions? what is the newest one now? the Type S one or?

[mAjEsTiC]

newest would probably be Type S...the differences are slight but i would say that Sony's one is a little better than the rest of the bunch...