Looks like Sony will add MP3 support to their portables.

LOL, gee, it's about time Sony acknowledged that little codec known as MP3. I honestly don't know what Sony was thinking about with releasing a portable digital audio player that lacked support for MP3 and just including ATRAC3 support. That's right, I know tons of people who have ATRAC3 songs in their library! Not. Well, anyway, this reversal of a really stupid strategy might give Sony a chance at competing with Apple and other players now. But since none still have native support for MP3, I wonder how many people will even know about a firmware upgrade offering by Sony for MP3.

They can dream

heheh

The format is one thing.. Good encoders another..
Although ATRAC did not perform so well in recent listening tests this does not mean it's a bad format. It means the combination format+encoder is poor. But we'll never know whether the format is a good one or just sucks since inner ATRAC workings are kept a secret, aren't they ?

I'm a big fan of "open" standards. You get all the nice things online. (MPEG Audio final spec drafts at mp3-tech.org, Dolby Digital (AC3) at Dolby.com, DTS at ETSI.org, Vorbis at Xiph.org)

Maybe (I don't count on it, though) the ATRAC format isn't that bad at all and only lacks a good encoder.

And yes, it was really about time that Sony started its MP3 native support. Transcoding MP3 to ACTRAC was a bad solution.

Sebastian

I wonder if the reluctance to add MP3(only the most popular universal format, uhmm duh) had something to do with the Sony Music devision? Conflict of interest?

Seems that Sony was the no. 1 company in portable market before the MP3 craze. Could it be they could have owned this position in the MP3 portable market if they had released competitive MP3 devices all this time?

-Chris

It is exactly that!! Sony has been losing out on customers for years because of conflicts in interests of various Sony businesses. Sony Music thinks MP3=piracy and hence won't let Sony Electronics to make an MP3 player. Hence ATRAC3. Heck, my friends had Sony CD players that would refuse to play CDRs because "If it is on a CDR, it has to be a pirated copy". It doesn't matter if the guy has just backed up his legally bought CD to CDR. It is still piracy according to them.

All we have to do is wait and watch the record companies implode and die. They have screwed artists and the customers for far too long. Their time will come.

Another good proof that MP3 won't be phased out as soon as people have been expecting.

Without a doubt. MP3 may fall out of favor in the future but players will still support it. Just as future optical disc drives will support CD-ROMs for a very long time. For whatever reason Sony only just now realized this.

Finally. Sony players are very well engineered and amazing (like NW-MS70D). Their main problem so far has been ATRAC3 and SonicStage restriction. Sony CD based players play MP3 and so you don't need to use SonicStage. But CDs are no longer attractive anymore in terms of space (why aren't there any DVD players?).
I thought one of the reasons why Sony sticks to ATRAC was that decoding ATRAC on hardware is very efficient (considering Sony players have ~70 hour battery time).

I remember until the recent listening test on HA, ATRAC3 was hailed by many Sony people as way better than MP3. I wonder how these people will react.

They reacted with the same usual complaints. My test was biased, it wasn't truely double-blind, the samples were carefully chosen to make Atrac3 look bad...

There was also a new kind of complaint: people claiming that Atrac3 encoded in hardware (I.E, minidisc players) would sound much better than Atrac3 encoded in software. That's bullshit in so many levels that I can't even be arsed to reply.

What I would really like to see is MP3 MD. I actually believe that this is Sony's only option if they wish to save the mini-disk from oblivion. If the MD hardware appeared as a USB disk drive, it would be perfect. Small size, really long battery life, and a gigabyte on a disk. I would stand in line to hand them my money.

I'll second that. The MD player is cool. But, weird format (ATRAC) and difficult if not impossible for a digital U/L from the MD player to the PC, even if it is your own recording.

If SONY incorporates MP3 to the MD players and allows a digital U/L from the new WAV file possible MD's which store 1GB the little box will be a giant killer. I hope the boys in Tokyo can summon up one brain between the lot of them and make these changes.

Actually, Hi-MD does appear on your PC as a 1Gb USB drive, and you can just drag and drop to it in Windows. Just don't trying doing this with music files though, for that you must use Sonicstage. But for data/fideo files, its works fine, although transfers are relatively slow. I have successfullly watched movie files off my Hi-MD, and if you fill 1Gb the quality aint bad...



While I am hesitant to try and debate this with the almighty Roberto, I have experienced some merit in this claim. I've done some limited "semi-blind" testing on my Hi-MD, and in some cases I am consistently preferring the hardware encoded 256k Atrac3plus over the Sonicstage version, but I'm not prepared to give up high speed transfers, so it's best I don't pursue this too much.

And I had no intention of ever posting about this on HA, because of the reception I might get... Besides that, my test method is not 100 % compliant with TOS. (It wasn't completely blind. I basically chucked a heap of tracks on my Hi-MD of each format plus some WAVS, and worked my way through them, some sighted, some blind.

Back to topic: Better late than never I suppose, but not much use to me as a MD user.

Den (now in hiding)

now....if only they would support ogg, or mpc.

Actually it only says they will support MP3 on their flash players, so far.

Just like M$ and WMA.

I can't bitch about their love of capitalism but I'll be damned if I'm going to be force-fed an inferior sounding format. If WMA was as good or better than MPC then my tune (and probably various others) would change.

actually, even if WMA sounded better than MPC or AAC for the same bitrate, i would still not convert.

there's more to a format than the quality... Sony have proven that

it's like using the Force - you can choose the light side or the dark side...

[edit]


OMG, that's gotta be the geekiest thing i've said for a very long time.

I'll third that - MP3 playing, uncompressed and untouched recording, digital uploading of audio, and 1 gig removable media. I would be in heaven (well of course, I'd get a model with high / low sensitivty recording modes).

The only other things I'd want is better battery life (which will most likely get better in the next generation) and mono uncompressed recording (yes, I would use it) but I could live without those.

Mp3 on flash based players and maybe on hard drive players...

Too little too late I'd say, iPods rule the school already.

Sony's only chance to compete is a new line of HiMD units supporting mp3 and maybe AAC (to lure iPod owners with a big AAC collections) both for playback AND direct encoding of recordings (iPods can't do that trick, can they?). Add a big 'No more DRM nonsense' sticker on the boxes, and boy they have a winner.

ATRAC is already going the way of Betamax, dragging the HiMD with it. If Sony doesn't react REAL FAST, they are out of the Walkman ™ business.



Enjoy!

No DRM? That would be interesting. But risky. BUt Sony won the early 80's Betamax case when VCRs were illegal. Maybe they have the balls to do it again? Nah, Sony Music has castrated them.

-Chris

I hate ipod, I hate their annoying crap music commercials, I hate their price, I hate how they can't record high quality.

If someone can name a better recorder than Hi-MD with low / high microphone sensitivity, a large removable media or a big hard drive, and can upload to the computer digitally and is under 300 freaking dollars, please let me know. I don't care if it can play random tracks, I don't care if can run windows xp, and I don't care if it has a 15 billion color display.

I probably sound repetitive, I think I'm losing it.

Thats good, but I thought Sony's HMP-A1 already supported MP3 natively. The sign was already on the wall.

Have you looked at the Neuros?

Although Sony Hi-MD players have their cool, I personally think iRiver H1xx/H3xx series are better. iRiver's players are expensive, but the whole package come with all the accessories you need.

No I haven't, but I just did and it looks like they only record into MP3. After messing with Minidisc's Atrac, I want nothing to do with a recorder that only records to lossy formats.

These look more promising. I wish there was a way I could test the microphone before buying the thing. And also it says plug microphones into the line in, does the unit provide power for the microphone?

2 manusate: Word like a wine, I'd sign it by my blood




Are you sure with that? Isn't it like MD & MP3 support (that you must convert to ATRAC)?




Yes, but with HiMD you're using MD/HiMD discs, so I think the data are more secured...

Indeed iHP120 and 140 support external micro throuh the line in, unlike iHP110 and 115...

i predicted this a while ago. i didnt think they could make any money selling an mp3 player that only plays 1 proprietary format. but im sticking to my iHP-120, it supports everything i can throw at it.

As an iHP120 owner i've predicted the same on another board quite a long time ago...
Cheers