Hey, everyone. I've been having problems burning onto ATRAC CDs and was directed to this site by a Sony rep on the phone, he said some of you guys were pretty good at figuring these things out...
I just got a D-NE710 CD-MP3-ATRAC3 Walkman and am having problems burning ATRAC3 CDs. I'm using the SonicStage Simple Burner software, as I don't really have a choice, and it will only let me burn from Audio CDs and MP3s stored on my HDD. The Audio CD option seems to work fine, but I've got all my music in WAV format, so I've been encoding them to high quality MP3s so I can burn them onto an ATRAC CD using the provided software.
Here's the problem: almost all of my MP3s that have been freshly encoded will record as blank tracks. I've tried various programs that use the LAME MP3 encoder (I'm pretty sure it's one of the best) and my files play fine in a program such as winamp, but the SonicStage SB will record them as blank tracks without even giving me any type of error. I've tried different quality settings and come to the conclusion that the lower the quality of the MP3, the more chances it will work with the SB software.
For example, if I have 100 MP3s at 320 kbps, joint stereo, etc., about 4 or 5 songs will play properly. If I use 256 kbps, maybe 10 or 15 songs will work. On the extreme, 128 kbps will allow for all of the songs to be converted properly (to the best of my knowledge).
I know that a lot of people are also having problems with this software, and there are no updates currently available for it. Does anyone have suggestions on what I should do? Or maybe a suggestion on a MP3 encoder I should be using?
[ This message was edited by: RussianFishBoy on 2003-10-08 16:17 ]
[ This message was edited by: RussianFishBoy on 2003-10-08 16:18 ]
Joined: Oct 09, 2002
Posts: 1116
From: Stockholm, Sweden
Posted: 2003-10-09 02:39
Hi!
Apologies for not having an answer for you, but I just had to comment on the fact that a Sony rep directed you here: Amazing! Anybody else experience this? (Keep it short as we want to help RFB primarily)
Heh, heh, I figured you'd be pretty proud of that. Actually, I figured out that the software seems to only have problems with 256kbps MP3s and higher. Anything encoded at 224kbps seems to work fine. But I've been doing a bunch of quality tests, and I've actually found that using the highest quality custom settings on WinLAME, 96kbps can sound comparable to the 105kbps ATRAC3 on almost all songs. So I think I've just decided that I'll stick with MP3s and get even more music on one disk instead.
Thanks for checking through my post anyway, and I'd like to recommend to anyone looking to buy an ATRAC-CD player, to keep in mind that they'll probably just end up using it as an MP3 player instead of an ATRAC player, as the software is not that great yet and MP3s have really gone a long way with the LAME encoder. Thanks for your time!
Hi all (my first post here BTW)
I'd have to agree with RussianFishBoy about the Atrac3 CD players - when i first got mine, i burned a few discs in the Atrac3+ format, but i find that it is VERY time consuming and the benefits are not all that great. Sure you can sqeeze 20+ titles on to one disc, but you can only play that disc on one device. I find that it's a lot easier to just play my exsisting mp3 discs. Of course that means changing the cd every 12 hours instead of every 20 hours, so in the long run you could develop arthritis in your wrist from the added activity!
My thought on the trouble with the coversion of high bit rate mp3's is that since you're compressing to 1/20 of original size, it probably doesnt make much difference if you use 320kbps or 128kbps. I know Sony claims that ATRAC3 is a superior compresion method, but what company would claim INFERIORITY???? I doubt that the human ear could really tell the difference! coverting from the original CD may be a different matter, but from an already compressed file, i dont think so.
Actually, the reason for me wanting to convert from a high bitrate MP3 was because the MP3 compression throws away data about the audio file, and so does the ATRAC, so when you go from a lower bit rate MP3 to an ATRAC, there's a higher chance of quality loss because different pieces of data are being thrown away from the audio file with each type of compression. Anyway, I've been working with MP3 CDs a lot, and the ATRAC3 compression is actually about the same as MP3 compression, if you use the LAME encoder with the highest quality algorithms. But it seems to be a pretty good MP3 CD player overall.
I just want to comment too on the fact that you were directed here by a Sony rep, v.cool. I'd also be really interested if anyone else has had this happen.
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Posted: 2003-10-08 16:16
Actually, I figured out that the software seems to only have problems with 256kbps MP3s and higher. Anything encoded at 224kbps seems to work fine. But I've been doing a bunch of quality tests, and I've actually found that using the highest quality custom settings on WinLAME, 96kbps can sound comparable to the 105kbps ATRAC3 on almost all songs. So I think I've just decided that I'll stick with MP3s and get even more music on one disk instead.
Posted: 2004-01-14 11:03
