Cassette and RTR tape forums? Might as well add an 8-track forum too, to tout the high-quality sounds of crinkled, 3 3/4 ips lubricated tape passing over a moving, misadjusted tape head. Or better yet, a forum dedicated to 78's and wax cylinders (w00t) Those are obsolete formats, and MiniDisc is well on it's way to joining them.

Seriously, though, I think HA already gives people the opportunity to discuss any audio format they want, being media, compression, or hardware. At this point, I see little purpose in creating a MiniDisc forum or any other format-specific forum for that matter. I think that given the results of the poll, this thread has already outlived it's usefullness.

(Edit: added "ips" and quote!).

Actually i'd vote NO about creating a MD or ATRAC forum too, it's just pointless chatting about atrac/MD, everythings been said (except one thing, not interest in my files btw? )

fur > I'm interested to listen your castanets encoding.
Could you, please, put fatboy.wav on your Sharp unit, and comment it ? I'm not a fanatic of this music, but I listened to an encoding performed some years ago (don't know if ATRAC chip was an 4.5 one or a Type-R), and result was really bad.

Fatboy is still considered to be a problem sample for MD/ATRAC. I don't have the link handy, but there is a problem sample page for ATRAC somewhere on the web, and when I last checked it, fatboy was still considered to be a problem with ATRAC-R.

Sharp and others have played with ATRAC for their own devices, but my understanding is that it has not had any major improvement on typical problem samples. It would be interesting to read fur's comments on this with his Sharp.



Sure.

Before I purchased my MD, I listened to a range of other portable type devices including a number of mp3 players from I-River and others. I was left unimpressed with the clarity of the output, including background hiss, interference from other devices, etc. Hell, one particular cheap Korean unit I tried who brand name currently escapes me, was so bad, that if my mobile phone rang, I got all sorts of strange drumming sounds, and another friend's unit would hum chronically near a PC.

MD was originally marketed by Sony as an "audiophile's" portable, and they deliberately chose higher quality head phone circuitry, etc than their bog standard walkman/discman range. I'm sure that over time the difference has reduced, but they do feature very high quality signal output. Pump one through a decent home hi-hi and you will see what I mean, compared to a Sony CD Discman or other portable device.

Secondly, artifacts have nothing to do with the other output quality. Many have posted in these forums that you don't need high end gear to hear artifacts, and I agree completely. I do the bulk of my testing for stuff I've posted on HA with an IBM laptop and a cheap pair of phones.

So I don't really understand the connection between a not-so-good codec (which I agree ATRAC is) and the DAC and other associated electronics.

Durability? I haven't had any problems. When you read those posts in the MD forums though, they also all complain about really flaky PC's and major problems with Windows, etc. OK so Windows ain't 100 % rock solid, but it isn't as bad as what they make out. I personally suspect some of it is the user. I look after my MD, but I use it every single day, including in the gym, working in the garden, and other physical activities, and it has always been rock solid. B)

Others results may vary...

Den.

Morning everyone, so i googled for the fatboy.wav and did comparisons, here's what i came up with:

It's hard to tell the clear winner.
The lame and bladeenc mp3s have artifacts, bladeenc ofcourse much worse than lame's --alt-preset insane mp3, which is only hardly noticeable. The dr7 though has none of the mp3 artifacts, but different ones, i wouldn't even call it artifacts, remember the signal was converted and amplified 2 times before i had the final wav. I'm positive with purely digital recording the dr7 beats lame clearly.
What was really surprising to me, how bad lame can sound even with 320kbps, after converting the castanets wav i was shocked. DR7 is clearly the winner over lame here, even going through some loss on the way to MD and back.
Artifacts in fatboy.wav are only hardly noticeable using lame. With the dr7, whereas the lame mp3 has some artifacts, dr7 plays just fine, but has one noticeable artifact (hiss) somewhere else, which i'm pretty sure is caused by analog transfer.

So, i did my own tests and found out ATRAC (in my sharp unit atleast) isn't by far as bad as many here say it is.
Maybe it's general dislike about the format comparable to the usual MS bashing.

Have a nice day

Maybe. But people here are talking about samples we all had ABXd successfully. On the ther side, most people are bashing WMA without listening to it. That's a big difference.

ATRAC3 isn't as easy to test as WMA. ATRAC (292 kbps) is quite impossible to evaluate, without buying a MD unit. And if you want to compare Sony vs Sharp algorithms, or hierarchise type-4, type-R and type-S, you have to buy a lot of MD units. There isn't any software encoder for ATRAC. And no warez possible for hardware players.

ATRAC criticism isn't unfounded bashing. We are just limited by few testing material. These are not really good. Not only on fatboy or on castanets, but with more common instruments to : ringing for trumpets, etc... I'm pleased to read positive report on new encoding chip, and I will be more pleased if someone could host these encodings.

Last but not least, talking about MD include ATRAC3 quality. I haven't found any scientific survey, but I suspect that more than 90% of MD encodings/listenings are now at 132 kbps, ATRAC3 encoder. Here, we can evaluate ATRAC3 performance without buying any MD unit. There are links for downloading SonicStage ; Vaio portable have this software installed. And after several ABX tests, I went to the conclusion that ATRAC3 - essential part of MD world - is quite unimpressing. I tested it with ~30 samples, classical one, and conclude that it wasn't worth for me to buy an expensive MD recorder for being limited to so weak quality. I don't call it "bashing".

fur, your results are hard to believe. LAME --api is even better quality that --aps, and transparent for nearly everything to my ears. Castanets with --aps and --api sounds pretty well for me, but I'm not very sensitive to pre-echo. Another sample where ATRAC 4.5 clearly fails is trumpets.wav at the PCABX page. With this sample, LAME --aps is still ABXable for me, but not --api.

Could you give us some ABX results over castanets, fatboy and trumpets with LAME --api? If they sound so bad they would be easily ABXable for you.

It would be also good if somebody could host fur samples.

fur, you can send me your ATRAC castanets sample to kikeg@arrakis.es. Preferably, use some lossless format to compress it.

Edit: You can send me fatboy and trumpets samples too, I think I can free some space at my web page to host these files.

OK, but i'm going to redo the files first to save one digital-> analog step by burning the test .wavs so i can use my cd players optical out to run it into the MD unit. Might take some days, i'm pretty busy with work and studying.

You can send me the files you already have. Two AD or DA steps are not noticeable if using decent equipment, such as your Audiophile and your MD. The only noticeable audible degradation from this process will be some background hiss, and only if you didn't set the recording and playback levels properly. But artifacts from transform codecs are of quite a different nature, and will be clearly noticeable if present.

This is my first post, hello.

I voted yes...though I wish I hadn't now...I did it without thinking ahead, lol. I apologise, please discount my yes vote.

I think it's important we maintain focus. ATRAC and MD are not one in the same: one is a compression technology and the other a medium, respectively.

Now, I haven't been able to objectively compare ATRAC Type-R with MP3 or MPC on the count of not having an optical out on my MD Recorder. I would have to buy an MD deck for that. But it is conceivable to me that MP3 is now superior to ATRAC even if it wasn't at some stage in the past. The MP3 format has advanced lossy compression a hell of a lot, mostly because of the way in which it has been developed: freely, by many, and with constant feedback. Sony don't listen to anyone ever, and if there's one thing that is predictable about Sony, it's that they're not concerned with their customers' happiness, only themselves and their copyrights. This is the standard attitude of a large corporation so it's not unusual. ATRAC doesn't use such things as VBR and Joint-Stereo, and it would probably require a major format change to implement these things, and hence make the newly updated ATRAC non-backwards compatible (Something Sony always tries to avoid it seems). ATRAC is somewhat stuck in the mud and even if it is of higher quality than MP3 to this day (some people still claim so), then it surely won't be in the near future. I'm not as well informed on technical matters concerning audio as others on this board (I'm a politics major dammit, lol), so I refuse to even dare attempt to say one is better than the other. However, one must look at the applications of these technologies. MP3 is by far the more versatile one, and I don't think anyone could disagree. Before an MD fanatic disagrees with me on this one, I will state that I'm comparing ATRAC and MP3, not MP3 and MD. The sheer and simple fact is, ATRAC is confined to one single medium, the MD...whereas MP3 is on CD-R/RW's, P2P networks, Hard Drives, Flash Memory, DVD-Rs. The MD medium in itself maybe versatile, but the ATRAC technology certainly isn't.

However, as I said, I believe it important to maintain focus. Sony has now given up marketing the MD technology as a replacement for a cassette tape and has now concentrated on marketing it as a portable medium (you'll notice that midi, mini and micro systems, and even boomboxes are rarely found with MD capabilities). The other application that many advocate using the MD technology for is live recording. When it comes to live recording, particularly for something sonically unintensive such as recording lectures...MD is a brilliant format due to the media being so cheap ($1) and interchangable. When it comes to its application as a portable technology...that's a little bit trickier and has been complicated with the advent of HD MP3 players. Basically, now that HD MP3 players are around...it undermines the argument of MD technology being better for portable applications due to its cheap and interchangable media because HD MP3 players don't need cheap and interchangable media on the count that their HD's are comparitively vast in terms of space when compared to an MD.

One argument does remain, however, in favour of MD technology...the units themselves are generally cheaper. Also...someone in this thread said something about good quality electronics. Well I tend to agree with good quality electrical components being paramount in audio hardware. The digital recording or encoding is of the utmost importance when it comes listening enjoyment...but once those bits have gone through the DAC into cheap electrical components and subjected to jitter and a number of other possible distortions it's not going to matter how good the digital encoding is...it will still sound shit. But I reject that MD players outclass portable MP3 players in this regard because Sony generally have a very poor quality to price ratio and portable MP3 players are quite expensive and have to justify the cost somehow. I've found that generally their electronics are of a high standard (except the original Rio hahaha). Of just as much importance, is something else in the analog world; speakers and headphones. Since MD technology is now no longer regarded as a replacement for a cassette tape, it is very rarely played over good speakers and decent headphones in the home, but over portable headphones on the move. Sadly, the only in-ear phones capable of conveying the difference in quality between an MP3 and an ATRAC TYPE-R SP recording are made by Etymotic research and are extremely expensive and distort when the jack is moved around even slightly. As such, they are generally regarded as in-ear monitors rather than portable earphones. At the end of the day, when it comes to applying ATRAC and MP3 in portable roles, no ones going to notice a difference either way.

This is why I don't believe there should be a specific forum for MD technology. it's like coming into a forum full of ferrari enthusiasts and saying how useful you're finding your Mini. People here are mostly concerned with finding the best possible quality with the least amount of bits allocated and pretty much everyone has judged ATRAC to be a bit of a dinosaur. Basically...from what I can tell, most people here are after fast efficient engines and not many people come here to discuss minis. There are already places to discuss both ATRAC and its native hardware. The only thing MD technology has going for it is the hardware. You have to remember the applications rather than just the engine being fast and efficient. I'm not insulting anyone here, I am just as guilty of wanting the fastest and most efficient engine and I use MPC for listening to music on my PC at home with my Grado headphones. But I use my MD recorder to record university lectures and as a portable listening device for music when on the move. In both these applications, my MD device has performed admirably.

Whatever you all may say about ATRAC itself though, please don't knock those lovely little media. The Minidisc is a medium which has more space than most flash memory based MP3 players for only about $1 per disc. One of the best things I can envision happening to the world of portable audio is for Sony to license it's MD technology for the incorporation of an MP3 decoder chip in both third party and their own Minidisc players.

Sorry about the multiple postings...but for some reason when I wrote something more than a paragraph long and posted it...all the sentences got jumpled and copied and buggered up somehow. It happened every single time...this was the only way I could stop it from doing that. I suggest the board owner look into it.

KikeG: Did you get those samples yet? I tested ATRAC3 and found it to be quite awful. I'd really like to see how the other MD codecs stack up.

No, I'm still waiting. I hope fur doesn't vanish as many people have done in the past, in a similar situation. fur, are you there?