Dunadan Posted July 7, 2004 Report Share Posted July 7, 2004 I have a 192kbps mp3 Bjork song (yea, yea, it's Bjork. but it has a strong, large range of sounds and so it's great for hearing the difference between differently compressed versions). I was listening to it on my HiMD at Atract3-132kbps. I was hearing some major noise (loud cracking at points) which was not on the mp3, so i created a Atrac3plus@256 file from the mp3 and transfered it assuming it would be perfect. The noise is still there!! At Atrac3plus@256!! At this point I thought somthing was wrong with my usb connection. So, I erased the omg files and tried playing the just the mp3 within SonicStage. There was still the loud crackling noise -- just playing MP3. When I play the 192kbps mp3 in Winamp and in Windows Media player there is no noise. This is horrible! Is the mp3 decoder in SonicStage bad? Any ideas? I usually laugh when i see people say this, but Im about to bring my 600d back to the store. Dunadan Edit: PS A couple other mp3s with big bass beats have this mp3 playback problem too (crackling). Ive had an MD player (MZ-R700) for 3 years and loved it (until my roomate dropped it from a little too high off the ground). However I can't live with this model if it can't play mp3s at at least the same quality. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jadeclaw Posted July 8, 2004 Report Share Posted July 8, 2004 Hmm, is that MP3 file a clean 192kBit file or is it VBR(variable bitrate)-encoded? The problem here is SonicStage, which has problems decoding certain more exotic MP3-extensions. I suggest to convert to .WAV first and then importing that into SonicStage. Since MDs are cheap, you have to do it only once anyway. Btw. I don't like Björk - But that's a completely different matter anyway... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dunadan Posted July 8, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 8, 2004 They are regular, fixed 192kbps mp3s, not variable. Converting to the file to wave is a fix. But this is happening to lots of my mp3s. I when i want to transfer 300 mp3s to HiMD, that will take a bunch of time and even more disk space. It's pretty ludacris to have to do. Anyone else have this prob? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fray Adjacent Posted July 8, 2004 Report Share Posted July 8, 2004 You mean ludicrous? Ludacris is some punk rap/hip hop artist. If you have the music on CDs, it would be much better to rip straight from CDs to ATRAC or directly to MD. If you don't have the CDs (i.e., downloaded the music), then you'll have to go through the process. I guess the music isn't so free, is it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redux Posted July 8, 2004 Report Share Posted July 8, 2004 Regardless, that's pretty bad to hear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teclis Posted July 8, 2004 Report Share Posted July 8, 2004 If this is true,somebody should wrtie to sony that there is such a problem!I mean for the next update of sonicstage the problem could be fixed.Im realy shocked that this happens to high-end software and MDs...I will wate till the next realise of the software and new Hi-MDs :wacky: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dunadan Posted July 11, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 11, 2004 Ludacrous, ludacris... I've lived in Russia for the past half year so excuse my English for going to shite. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaharj Posted July 12, 2004 Report Share Posted July 12, 2004 To Mr dunadan11, I am new guy in this community. Can you give or email to me 1 mp3 sample from Bjork song that have "loud cracking at points" to me? I would like to test & understand it if you don't mind. shaharj@yahoo.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xispe Posted July 12, 2004 Report Share Posted July 12, 2004 eh! damn, i'm not going to upgrade so soon to himd my real time recordings never fail! :laugh: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeromd Posted July 12, 2004 Report Share Posted July 12, 2004 i imported some mp3s to SS2 and this has never happened. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leland Posted July 12, 2004 Report Share Posted July 12, 2004 I have imported many mp3 files and have also never had this kind of artifact. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fast Eddie Posted July 12, 2004 Report Share Posted July 12, 2004 Just tried some MP3 files with SS2 this evening. Seems to work fine and dandy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dunadan Posted July 12, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 12, 2004 Here's the email i got from sony. Jake is the man. Hello again, The codec you used to create the MP3s may not be supported by SonicStage and would cause the issue you are experiencing when trying to bring these MP3s into SonicStage. Try importing a CD into ATRAC format in SonicStage and see if you have the same problem. Regardless, SonicStage is not an MP3 jukebox so you may encounter problems with MP3s and SonicStage. If the information I have provided does not completely answer your question, please update this incident so I may be of further assistance to you. Sincerely, Jake Customer Support Representative Sony Connect http://www.connect.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aeriyn Posted July 14, 2004 Report Share Posted July 14, 2004 Well. I've had this problem with some of my music (not all, mind you). When you download an MP3, you really don't know how many times it's been encoded and decoded. I've got some that sound so clear I'm sure they were ripped directly from a CD. And I've got a few songs so filled with artifacts that I'm almost positive it had been ripped, encoded, decoded and encoded again, probably changed format a few times... etc. The problem with MP3 to ATRAC is that SonicStage is going to decode the MP3 into linear PCM and then encode it into ATRAC. More compression artifacts will be introduced. This is most notable to me in LP4 mode on my MZ-N10, or in ATRAC3plus at any bitrate other than 256kpbs (with my friend's atrac/mp3/CD player). Also, be of the understanding that even if your Bjork song says it's at 192kpbs does not mean that it was always at 192kbps. People can burn MP3s to CDs and give them to their friends, which will in turn rip the songs and perhaps encode them at a higher or lower compression rate. However, the quality is going to degrade with all this compressing and decompressing and recompressing. So even if you switched your 192kpbs Bjork song over to 256kbps ATRAC3plus, it's still going to sound WORSE than the original file, because it had to be decoded back to linear PCM waveform first before it could be encoded with the ATRAC3plus compression algorithm. The "worse" probably would not be noticeable, but then again it might. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaharj Posted July 15, 2004 Report Share Posted July 15, 2004 aeriyn, I agree with you. But how to explain when Mr Dunadan said that the bjork song can play well without any cracking noise with Windows Media Player and Winamp Player? There is something missing info that we need to know about. Do your mp3 having problems with Windows Media Player ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jadeclaw Posted July 15, 2004 Report Share Posted July 15, 2004 There is a problem with MP3. This format isn't as unified as it should be. Since its creation 15 years ago, a lot of changes and improvements had been introduced and we actually don't know, on which point on the timeline the decoder in Sonicstage is stuck. And every improvement, that came after that point can trip up the decoder. A sloppy implementation cannot be ruled out either. And there had been MD-players suffering from similar problems: http://www.minidisc.org/atrac_breakdown.html And don't worry, Sonicstage isn't the only problem child here, my DVD-Player hates VBR-encoded files. *Grmpf* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leland Posted July 16, 2004 Report Share Posted July 16, 2004 I think Jake is trying to get you to buy the Bjork album. Is she on a Sony label? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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