Sony NW-MS70d and ATRAC3

[lite12]

Greetings,

I've been playing with my Sony NW-MS70D and wanted some feedback, theoretical or otherwise, from others about this product.

The first is regarding the ongoing research into the OpenMG format and ATRAC3/ATRAC3plus encoding methods. This piece of hardware has the potential to make things significantly easier. Popping it in the charging cradle will bring up the contents of the internal memory stick on a removable drive in your My Computer window. You can see the "Control" and "HIFI" folders plainly and all the individual audio files which are packed in .MSA format ( Any relation to the .MSA packing Atari used? ) and tucked into the HIFI folder. Each audio file also has an accompanying .XML file which can be viewed by any browser or XML viewer that displays it's codec, artist name, title etc etc etc.. These XML files are stored in the Control folder.

I don't know a lot about minidiscs, but I do know that Sony's cell phones also use the .MSA format to store their proprietary audio formats.

For hacking purposes it's quite the playground.

My first actual question is whether or not the MS70D can store ATRAC3/ATRAC3plus formats at a higher bitrate then SonicStage allows. For example, SonicStage will let you convert your MP3 or WAV files into the following;

ATRAC3 - 66kbs, 105kbs, 132kbs

ATRAC3plus - 48kbs, 64kbs

I hear RealAudio/OpenMG Jukebox supports these formats in kbs reaching over the 300kbs mark. I would like to know if it's possible to use those files on the MS70D. Also I would like to know if either of these are free to download. I havnt had luck finding them.

For anyone who's curious about the audio quality of these formats; so far I'm pretty impressed. A regular 64kbs MP3 sounds something to the tune of nails on a chalkboard. The 64kbs ATRAC3plus sounds identical to my ears to a 128kbs constant bitrate using Chun-Yu's MP3 writer. I found the 132kbs ATRAC3 had a definite increase in quality, contrary to Sony's claims ( that that ATRAC3plus was identical or higher in quality at 64kbs ). The increase however was so marginal that the size difference of double the space didnt seem really worth it. That setting will be for a select few songs. The 132kbs ATRAC3 was definately of higher quality then the 128kbs MP3, but that is to be expected; the encoder I was using did not have an option for 132kbs MP3 output. I wanted to mention this since I've read ( I think on this forum ) that the extra 4kbs was actually padding of 0's.

For those who own the device I'm also wondering if anyone has had any luck with getting Japanese characters to display properly. Although I've set the hardware to display the japanese writing, I can't get them to display properly on the software end, and thus what gets transfered to the player is garbled ASCII symbols.

Finally for those who want to share music with friends, the documentation and MS70D FAQ states that music can be transfered to any computer that has SonicStage installed on it and play normally. Some people were talking about this being impossible due to restrictions of OpenMG. Has anyone given it a shot?

-Lite

NW-MS70D Epinions product comparison:

http://www.epinions.com/pr-Sony_NW-MS70D_M...e/sort_dir_~des

[Guest NRen2k5]

lite... I have never heard of a Chun Yu mp3 encoder. A quick Google search tells me it's a WinAMP plug-in, which possibly interfaces with a LAME dll. Can you clarify?

Also, if it is indeed LAME, I'm curious; what version of LAME are you using?

[lite12]

Hi there,

The version of Chun-Yu's writer used was 3.0 which uses LAME 3.88. These results are also consistant with Mukoli's MP3 Output ( out_lame ) which uses LAME DLL 3.9.

-Lite

[pata2001]

I have noticed the same file/directory structure when I burn an AtracCD. As for bitrate, I'm not sure if there are "300kbps" bit-rate as HiSP Atrac3+ is only 256kbps and the original SP is 292kbps. OpenMG and SS can transfer the song as a "fake" SP, but only SS2.0 that support the HiSP. As for the player supporting higher bit-rate, I have an "older" gen atrac3+ PCDP, and at that time, atrac3+ only available as 64/48kbps. Recently I downloaded SS2.0, and my PCDP plays 256kbps atrac3+ just fine, which means your player should be able to play the higher bit-rate since it's still the same codec.

Although I don't have the NW-MS70D, I do have the NW-E3, an older Network Walkman, and I don't think you can upload songs to other PCs due to the check-in/out process.

[lite12]

Thanks for that info pata2001!

I'd like to give SS2.0 a try. If anyone can provide a download link to it I will experiment,

-Lite

[Christopher]

lite: http://forums.minidisc.org/viewtopic.php?t=4112

[lite12]

Thanks, kurisu.

I've downloaded the program as suggested and given it a test run!

The 256kbs OMG was created and transfered without error onto the NW-MS70D. The codec information was also displayed properly on the backlit screen as Atrac3plus/256kbs.

The sound quality is a relief from the previously frozen option of 132 and 64plus, which had butchered a few songs that were reacting badly to the ATRAC3/+ codec for unknown reasons.

I still have the japanese character problem as mentioned in my initial post. Any ideas will be welcomed,

Please, some one enlighten me on SS2.0.

Is this a hacked version of the japanese official SS2.0 for HIFI devices? What has been modified? What are the differences between Daijoubu's and iceeedtea's version?

This is the first of heard of this software and some documentation about how it differs from official versions would help,

Thanks,

-Lite