Atrac, How Good Is It?


Bingo Jesus

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I've just gone and bought myself an NW-HD5 from Amazon, and have just dowloaded the SonicStage software. I just have a question, is the 66 kpbs ATRAC3plus similar or the same in quality to a 128 kpbs MP3 (as Sony suggest)?
 
Bingo Jesus posted on Aug 26 2005 at 08:27 AM said:
I've just gone and bought myself an NW-HD5 from Amazon, and have just dowloaded the SonicStage software. I just have a question, is the 66 kpbs ATRAC3plus similar or the same in quality to a 128 kpbs MP3 (as Sony suggest)?
No. ATRAC3's not a very good codec considering how much SONY pushes it down everyone's throat. In my personal testing, you can expect an 80+kbps ATRAC3plus file to sound about equal to a 128kbps Lame mp3.

If you want my opinion about your choice in player, I think there are many better (and cheaper) products out there that don't make you transfer using some SonicStage program. If you don't care either way and still have your receipt, I would suggest a Creative Zen, a HD-based player from iRiver (very good stuff), or even iPod.
 
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You dont need Sonic Stage to transfer stuff to the HD3 / HD5. Go to the Sony hack site to get a simpler program that doesnt add DRM to your files.

(I wish I had known about this earlier, since it would have helped me out big time)

Congrats on getting a HD5, I have an old HD3 and it smokes the ipod any day :D
 
lizard808uk posted on Aug 26 2005 at 06:38 PM said:
You dont need Sonic Stage to transfer stuff to the HD3 / HD5. Go to the Sony hack site to get a simpler program that doesnt add DRM to your files.

(I wish I had known about this earlier, since it would have helped me out big time)

Congrats on getting a HD5, I have an old HD3 and it smokes the ipod any day :D

Thanks for the link. I've already owned a Creative Nomad Jukebox, and I loved it apart from the low battery life, I bought the HD5 as it's regarded to have one of the best battery lives.

Lizard, what bit rate do you encode at, and how does it sound though the HD3? I think I'll end up gunning for the middle bit rate, but I may well go for either 64 or 256.
 
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Just got my HD5, I just have a little problem. My motherboard supports USB 2.0, and I have XP sp2 installed, however the driver for my USB Controller has no drivers so I can only upload at USB 1.1 speed. I've tried installing the USB 2.0 drivers on the motherboard Driver Disc, but to no avail, nothing happens.

Has anyone else had this problem, does anyone know from where to pick up working USB 2.0 drivers for a Winfast K7 NCR18D motherboard?

EDIT: I've fixed it, by disabling it, and then re-enabling it.
 
Just checked my HD3, and all the atracplus tracks are at 64kbps. The sound quality is great. I only use this on "fresh" cds though. E.g. something I dont already have on mp3, like a friends cds for example. Cross converting mp3 to actracplus is pointless and may also sound bad since you are transcoding. (I think thats the term anyway). There are also more sound options available with atracplus since Sony, naturally, wants to plug it and if space is a premium, a standard album will only take 30MB instead of 60MB.
 
my dad owns an hd3, found that through standard phones stuff encoded at 66 atracplus sounded pretty decent compared to my 128 mp3 collection.

having a little look at this software, may pick up a hd3 once my karma claps it!
 
spray posted on Aug 31 2005 at 03:40 PM said:
my dad owns an hd3, found that through standard phones stuff encoded at 66 atracplus sounded pretty decent compared to my 128 mp3 collection.
Tin-ear :D
 
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In the end I decided to go for a 132kpbs bit-rate, as these files were roughly the same size as my old 128kbps MP3s, they sound very good in comparison. But I'll need to get some new headphones as Sony's bundled ones are crap.
 
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