Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Data Storage Media Music

Converting Audio to Sony's ATRAC Format? 42

Posted by Cliff from the playing-your-music-like-you-want-to dept.
wmspringer asks: "Having recently gotten a Sony CD player, I've become increasingly frustrated with the provided SonicStage Simple Burner software. I like being able to record over 24 hours of music on one CD and the extra options atrac3plus offers, but I can't stand using the software anymore. Do slashdot readers have any suggestions as to the best software to use for burning atrac3plus format? On a related note, what is the highest data rate worth using?"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Converting Audio to Sony's ATRAC Format? More

Converting Audio to Sony's ATRAC Format?

Comments Filter:

  • ATRAC3plus (Score:5, Informative)

    by thesp ( 307649 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @01:20PM (#8589740)
    ATRAC3plus [sony.net] is a Sony proprietary standard, with all this complex licensing issues this entails, hence it's unlikely anyone else will be using this technology, particularly in the free/open source software community. Sony are somewhat canny [mp3licensing.com] about releasing details of the licensing, so I haven't found anything more detailed about their licensing strategy than this [sony.net]. This paper [soton.ac.uk] also gives some peripheral insight.
    • Maybe someone will figure out how to use the .DLL files (see how the various video codecs are usable on linux doing this) but given the popularity of MP3, I suspect nobody wants to invest the time.

    • Re:ATRAC3plus (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Mr. Piddle ( 567882 )
      proprietary standard

      I really really wish people would stop saying this.

  • What model do you have? (Score:5, Informative)

    by karnal ( 22275 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @01:21PM (#8589751)
    Unfortunately, I don't have any real insight to how to solve your problem, but I have researched these cd/mp3/atrac players before.

    As a side note, I bought a MiniDisc player/recorder a few years back. Now, when I use it to record from computer, the last few tracks on any disc don't work properly -- so I don't know that I'll be buying a new md player anytime soon.....

    But I have looked into CDR/mp3/etc players at the stores. Some of them look pretty cheap (and rather bulky -- as in thick...) I thought about buying a Sony mp3 cd player, but was uncertain as to whether it would play mp3's.... or if you had to convert it to ATRAC (obviously using their software to do so...)

    I know that Sony has extensive patents on ATRAC, and any of their products that allow you to record to an mp3-like format probably use this format. To this day, I am unaware of any other software to actually create ATRAC files, but I think that the popularity of mp3 files has overshadowed the attempts to reverse engineer it... That being said, does your model do MP3's as well?
    • My understanding is that my model does play regular mp3s, but so far I've only used regular music CDs and an ATRAC CD. I suppose I should try it on mp3s, then I'll post the result.
    • Sorry if this sounds like an ad for Sony, but I have been very happy with my Sony mp3 cd player. It plays mp3 disks that I burn with WinXP or Nero just fine. I haven't even bothered to install the Sony software onto my computer.

      It's also easily as thin as any regular cd player. The best feature is the battery -> great lifetime + rechargeable. The player only spins the disk for about 30seconds as it reads the song data. Then it stops and waits for the next song.
      • Sorry if this sounds like an ad for Sony, but I have been very happy with my Sony mp3 cd player

        Thats because you got a Sony MP3 player, and were not misled by the salesman to buy a Sony Digital Music Player instead. My one upside is that I paid a third of the selling price because it was open box; I might not have realized it wasn't an MP3 player until it was too late to return it because the lame software was Win95 only and couldn't access my MP3 collection stored in Win2k NTFS. Of course, I'm now stuck

    • If you care about bulk, and can spare $100, try iRivers SlimX models. They're litteraly the size of 3 or 4 stacked CDs. They also come with an inline remote that rivals any interface I've seen on a portable music device. I hear the newest firmware supports Ogg, too.
    • I just bought a Sony D-NE510 this week.
      It plays CDs, CDR/CDRW (with mp3s or ATRAC files)

      The antiskip works pretty well. Since I listen while I jog, that was a must have. It also has a "hold" slide switch that allows you to lock all the controls so you don't accidentally bump and change something. Also has a feature that limits the maximum audio output to protect your hearing from tracks that aren't normalized.

      I loved the warning in the manual about copy protected cds not being supported.

      I concur with

  • I use SonicStage Jukebox (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nemui-chan ( 550759 ) on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @01:34PM (#8589892) Homepage
    That being said, I've never -ever- had as many problems with software as I do with Sony's software to burn minidisks. The software that comes with it is crap, and the SonicStage is only slightly better. My suggestion is don't buy another sony digital media product. Personally, I won't get another one. Which sucks, because I love my minidisk player, but its just not worth the effort to try and get music on to it.

    nems

  • SonicStudio (Score:2, Informative)

    by thesp ( 307649 )
    I am aware that SonicStudio [sonicstudio.com] has licensed ATRAC3plus from Sony for their N-code project, but this is probably a rather heavy-duty [sonicstudio.com] package for your needs, with a price tag to match. It's mostly used by professionals, although, to be fail, Photoshop was once solely the province of pro graphic artists.

  • Use Nero's ImageDrive (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 17, 2004 @01:50PM (#8590092)
    I have a NetMD MiniDisc player, and have always hated using the Sony software that came with the player. The best way that I have found, and this may halp you out as well, is to use Nero's ImageDrive feature. Basically, you compile your playlist in Nero with CD tracks, MP3s, etc. and burn it as an image file. Next, load the image file into ImageDrive. Finally, use the Sony software to "copy a CD" (the CD you will copy as a source will be the ImageDrive). The ATRAC conversion will take place automatically, and your "enlarged" CD that is spoofed by ImageDrive will be compressed.

    Do a Google search on "nero minidisc" and you will get more details.
  • <Emily Latella>
    What's all this I hear about 8-track - didn't that format die in the 70's?...

    Oh...ATRAK??...

    Never mind.
    </Emily Latella>
  • My brother has MiniDisc and we use RealOne player to download MP3's to the device. Much easier to use than the Sony tools that came with it, since you can avoid all the check-in/out junk.

    Now we were using MP3s, it may or may not work with ATRAC. Why do you care about ATRAC anyway? Doesn't it play MP3?
    • Yes, but ATRAC files are smaller. I should try mp3s, though; I'm not sure whether or not the extra options on the player really require the ATRAC format. I've seen check-in/check-out a few times, but I'm not sure what it is; a restriction from the minidisc player? The one I have plays full-size CDs.
      • The check-in/check-out is how the Sony software works for the higher quality ATRAC files. It is a DRM system in the software that downloads music to the MP3 player. I would think they do something similar when you want to get ATRAC files out of the library. But if you're using simple burner though, I guess you don't see the check-in/out stuff.

        Anyway you should check out RealOne to see if it does what you want. Personally I wouldn't mess with ATRAC format since it typically involves DRM. Rip once, rip right

  • Here's an ACM codec (Score:2, Informative)

    by menders ( 449045 )
    http://www.minidisc.org/atrac3.zip [minidisc.org]

    You can use it in an application like CoolEdit or VirtualDub. RealProducer has an encoder as well. I recommend posting in the forums at http://www.hydrogenaudio.org [hydrogenaudio.org] if you have any further questions.
  • I told my wife i wanted an MP3 player for my birthday. My wife is a die hard sony fan. We have a sony digital camera, sony, digital camcorder, sony projection tv, well you get the picture. Anyways sony makes this network walkman [sonystyle.com] Which is a ATRAC player. Well my wife saw it and loved it, not knowing the diffrence between mp3 and ATRAC. Now when i told her i wanted an mp3 player i was thinking of that $79 one I saw at cosco. Well she got the sony one for me. It is really cool, tiny and has pretty good size bu
  • I'm a minidisc owner and use the sonicstage software all the time without issue. I am aware that this software has a bad reputation but immediately upgraded it to the latest version which for Minidisc is something like 1.5.3 - (available by following the internet link in the application to Sony's support site) - and have run error free ever since. Most users who report problems have older PCs, apparently the software is a resource hog. Hang tight though - Sony is about to release a vastly updated Sonicst
  • Using MP3 on these players is great, it works fine. But the reason why atrac3plus is desirable is because the sound quality at low bit rates is nothing short of amazing.

    I'm reasonably fussy, and I can just about 'get by' with 48kbps atrac3plus files. They don't sound great, but as good as well encoded 96kbps MP3s! That's more than enough for these devices since they have very poor output volume, and when you're walking around an airport, who needs high definition sound?

Slashdot Top Deals

There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

Close