Hi!

I wonder why so many users of this forum regards Atrac as a dead codec, like in this thread: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....c=49803&hl=

I could think of three reasons:

a) Atrac sounds worse than other codecs (?)
b) Atrac is supported by too few players
c) The users are forced to use SonicStage.

Regarding a) I have searced these forums, and found one listening test from 2004 where it came out last among the tested codecs. But I haven't seen any other tests with the more recent Atrac3 Plus, except for Sonys own labtests, where it, not surprisingly, is rated best. (http://www.minidisc.org/keep/ITS_test_report.pdf). But that test is also old (2003).

Regarding b), it's true that Atrac is supported mosty (or only?) by Sony's own players.

And regarding SonicStage, I have heard a lot of complaints. I started using it one year ago, and since then they have upgraded the program a number of times. Personally I think the program does a decent job - I can't see why it should be worse than most of the competition. It now also rips very fast (version 4.2). I just checked the ripping speed. One 46 minutes album (image file) ripped in 55 seconds in SonicStage, and one minute twenty seconds in Windows Media Player 11. I guess that EAC with Lame would be a lot slower than WMP11.

Personally I am now ripping my albums to both Atrac 3 plus (64kb) and to MP3. So I rip an image first, and then use SonicStage and either Windows Media Player or EAC with Lame to rip to MP3. The reason is that I own two portable players, a HiMD minidisk and a Pocket PC. I like both very much. The minidisk is ideal for trips, because I can store most of my collection on a few disks. Plus it uses normal AA batteries. One battery last 34 hours, so I don't have to be close to a charger. It can also do high quality recordings. With the Pocket PC, at home or when I am in a wi-fi sone, I can access my complete record collection on harddisk over the net. The Pocket PC can also do so many more things besides playing music. So I think that both units are better value for the money than MP3 players.

Both players has another one big advantage over most MP3 players, and that is gapless playback. I think that gapless playback is just as important as the sound quality. And if you want gapless playback on MP3 players the choice is quite limited. As far as I know it is currently only supported by the latest Ipods, plus iRiver?, and maybe a few others. Plus it is supported by Sony players with Atrac files.

To me Atrac 3 plus at 64 kb sounds fine. I haven't AB tested the Atrac files to the MP3 files, which are encoded at a higher bitrate, but I doubt that I would hear much difference. My ears are not trained for that (they are only trained to hear the musical details, as I am a musicologist.)

To conclude: I think that the Atrac codec is not quite dead yet, and I hope that it will survive and develope further.



Trondis

I don't think ATRAC is dead. It's just becoming meaningless. Like other well known codec in these forums (that I won't name here or people will claim I'm being a troll )

IMO, ATRAC is not a bad encoder, especially at low bitrates (<160 or so) so I think ATRAC's bad reputation is coming from your B and C points. My grandfather used to rip to ATRAC, and was very happy with its quality, so I never tried to stop him.

Regarding the MD player, I've used a Sony MD player (can't recall the model; it wasn't mine) and was also pretty happy with it as far as battery life/storage capacity goes.

In conclusion, I do not think ATRAC is dead, and if you can stand SonicStage, it's not a bad encoder. I too encourage its further development.

1. Can you back up your claim that ATRAC is a good codec < 160 kbps with some scientific proof, like ABX?
2. What do you mean by "good" codec?

/Kef

If the listener is happy with the sound then it's a good codec IMO.

Well, I COULD back it up with some ABXing, but since it's just an opinion I think I can get away without it. If I were comparing it to anything specific or was less vague, I'd be sure to.



Exactly. To add to that, as long as one person is happy with it, it can't be truly "dead".

Wow. Backed up by so much scientific proof we can now tell for sure, that neither bad nor dead codecs exist in the world.

EDIT:
I am glad that you brought your brilliant reasoning to my attention.

Sony's www.connect.com was talking about ATRAC being the format that their audio was encoded in and how it was "more superior" than any "normal mp3". However once I finished downloading the 10 free tracks I got from buying two 50 packs of Sony CD-R's I noticed that in SonicStage the audio format was called OpenMG. The quality in my opinion wasn't that bad (they were also seemingly all 137 kbps, don't know if they were VBR or CBR though) - but it wasn't good enough to invoke a purchase (good thing they were all free).

I don't know if the format was ATRAC in some container format or not, but the format won't ever make me switch from LAME's higher quality encodings, e.g.; -V4 and above, let alone aoToV compiles of Vorbis at -q 4 and above.

If I had erroneously taken your reply as bitterly sarcastic, I would have to say that it did not contribute in any way to this discussion. But I know you were being serious, so it's okay. Thank you for the compliment.

Why don't you tell me about what you consider a bad codec? That would certainly contribute.

And please, tell me if you think ATRAC is dead. If so, why?

i'm not really an open source geek, but atrac is so fantastically proprietary that using it is insane. honestly, your music might well be inaccessible in as little as three or four years... hardware discontinued, no sonicstage for vista, whatever.

the only store selling it is sony connect, the only hardware playing it is sony... and didn't they make some portable player that would ONLY play atrac, ie transcoded any mp3s you tried to feed it?

the apple system is equally proprietary, but a) aac is an open standard b) apple lossless decoding has been open sourced and c) the ipod plays mp3 just fine. that leaves only m4p, in which case it's not the codec that's screwing you (aac is a perfectly competent format), it's the drm. sony connect screws you with both.

an anecdotal litmus test*: i a) work in a recording studio and b) totally get off on this audio compression stuff. despite having a zillion tools across two operating systems that can do pretty much anything under the sun with regard to audio, i still don't have anything that lets me read atrac.

just some thoughts. i don't care about atrac enough to give a damn whether it's considered alive or dead.

(enough people like me, and that makes it dead, i guess)

*not scientifically sound a la abx

Atrac is "dead" because:

1. Since by encoding your music to MP3 will allow compatibility with non-Sony DAPs, why use Atrac? Now, most Sony DAPs support other more popular codecs (MP3, WMA, AAC) anyway, so why bother with Atrac? Even HiMD units since the 2nd gen can playback MP3s natively now.
2. In the past, 1 big advantage for Atrac is gapless playback on Sony DAPs. Now, with iPod being gapless using a more mainstream MP3 and AAC, why bother with Atrac?
3. Sony doesn't even seem to support Atrac anymore. Sony Ericsson cellphones never support Atrac. Non-PCDP AtracCD devices never support seamless (gapless) playback of AtracCD.
4. Bitrate support on Atrac devices are not standardized. User can encode to 1 bitrate of Atrac in Sonicstage, but it might not be supported on the user's own Atrac device (eg. AtracCD), forcing the user to transcode to the supported bitrate. Imagine having an MP3 player that only support 256kbps and 128kbps CBR bitrate, not 192kbps, etc.

You don't have to even go into SQ to realize the severe limitations of Atrac.

ATRAC isn't a bad format from a technical/quality point of view, but is there any reason to use it now that most new Sony products support AAC and MP3? It's not dead (lots of Sony ATRAC-only products are still around), but it's doomed in the long run, and Sony has implicitly acknowledged that.

IMO the unwillingness to dump MiniDisc and ATRAC when it became clear that they were lemons has been Sony biggest mistake in the last 10 years - mp3 players have completely wiped out its dominance in portable player business.

... And then HA became completely useless with one single sentence

b) and maybe c)

I actually brought a Sony CD Walkman - that can also play Atrac CD's - a few months ago. But it also plays mp3 disc's and I already have mp3 files.

I did rip a few mix CD's to Atrac to take advantage of the gap-less playback, but Sonicstage took ages to write them to a CDR so I don't think I'll bother again.

The reason to use Atrac instead of AAC or MP3 on Sonys players is that you get gapless playback.

And minidisc is also a recorder, a very good one. So why should Sony dump them? What alternatives do you have today for a portable recorder?

The reason why minidiscs sell less than MP3 players might of course be that most people don't need recording. But these devices also don't get any attention in media, just like Pocket PCs. And in my opinion both devices are better value for the money than MP3 players since they do more things.


Trondis

Although there are mp3 players that also record.

atrac (the original format) that was on the 60, 74 & 80min mini disc I think is pretty much dead.

atrac3 and atrac3plus are the latest ones and by no means they are dead. Its actually the only codec I am comfortable with at the 64kbps bit rate (the one that I rip my Cd's into).

ok he-aac is really good and mp3pro isn't bad, just there are a lot more devises that play atrac3(plus) than those formats.

just my 2cents

And all because Sony didn't include the codec on the phone doesnt mean its dead, they are still making daps that use that codec, the psp is one.

and the main thing that you should note.
atrac3plus has better battery life than mp3 with the same bit rate and better quality. <- that's why it should be used!

Why do you think that? Have you compared units that support both formats? If so, I'd like to see the results.

They haven't dumped it because, just like DAT, Minidisc completely missed its intended market and hit else were. Lots and lots of theatres use MiniDisc to play sound effects off because of the ability to name, re-order and edit tracks and instant start and auto cue on the majority of players.

In fact I've only stopped using MiniDisc for this purpose since I've discovered QLab ( http://www.figure53.com ) which is a media time line program for Mac OS X.

Its one of the reasons atrac was developed, but I haven't had any test done meself, the only thing I have isn't nately designed for audio playback (the psp) but I keep hearing it over and over again.

I have always found the sony battery life specs to be accurate, so I do trust them more than other companies and they do show results for most populary used bitrates and batterylife.

I can't find where I read this now, but if its not better its atleast the same batterylife.

I just found this, from the MZ-RH1, but I can't find same bitrate comparison.
http://forums.minidisc.org/images/rh1batt.gif

(Hi-LP is 64kbps and sounds really good for its bitrate)

Aren't MD recorders still the best value for low-cost (<$200) field recording?

They are very rapidly being replaced by things which record onto flash. For example several people I know have junked minidisc recorders for Edirol R1s (http://www.rolandus.com/products/productdetails.aspx?ObjectId=744&ParentId=114) which records in either 24 bit uncompressed WAV or MP3. Although that's a little above the $200 mark.

Fostex and Tascam both make compact flash based recorders but they can't be called low cost.

Just like people say $500 audio cables sound better? I'm not intersted in what people say, rather I'm intersted in what is true.



Yes but that has nothing to do with ATRAC, and everything to do with the very high battery capacity Sony traditionally uses.



That link says that 64k gets better battery life, and 256k worse, with 128k mp3 almost exactly what we'd expect from 128k or 132k (whichever is used in the latest version of the codec, I forget). If anything, I think your link disproves ATRAC having better battery life. Since we don't know if the Sony MP3 decoder is as optimized as their ATRAC3 decoder, we can conclude that ATRAC is no better, with the possibility that it is worse.

Edit: I'll take that back. It could be that the Minidisc itself uses so much power that all we're measuring is the bitrate since the CPU power is completely swamped. In which case format wouldn't really matter.

Or if its use chips to decode, yeah, its a bad example.

Inaccurate.

All digital audio is decoded by a chip.

There is a possibility that the "more power efficient" of Atrac3 is only a marketing trick.
If we consider that most of the power is used for the minidics transport itself, then you might claim that if the quality of Atrac3@64 and mp3@128 would be similar, then you would have some increased battery life by using Atrac3@64 instead of mp3@128.

SonicStage is the software equivalent of stapling your nuts together. The only good feature is that it's limited to Win32 platforms.
Sony foisted rootkits on children, old folks, and everybody else using regular music CDs. Anybody else who tried that would be locked up for decades. It's not safe to trust Sony Corporation software so forget points 1 & 2.
The reason ATRAC3 exists is because Sony suffers from even worse NIH than Apple plus they let their record industry execs overrule decent engineering every time.
Sony brought us Betamax, Memory Stick, UMD, ATRAC. Good riddance to 'em all.

Correct me If I'm wrong, but I think as long as there is SDDS in the movie theatres, ATRAC won't be dead, because it is used there. This is not really consumer business, but may be one reason Sony is not going to drop it that fast...

There will always be users of the format long if it is unsupported,
Its just one of the less used audio codecs, sony are always going to push it on there walkmans.

I like the format, it saves alot of space in devises.

It isn't dead yet, and I don't think it will be soon eiter.

Shame on me for this, but SONY has limited itself to 95% of the market. Darn, what a mistake that was. ROTFLMAO

OK, atrac isn't dead. VQF, that's a dead codec.

But I would say atrac is moribund. It isn't getting much development, it isn't growing it's user base, and it doesn't have much of a future. It's very much like Musepack. I still use musepack, and anyone who finds that atrac fits their needs can use that.

But making quality claims for the codec is not a great idea when it has been outperformed in most every independent test. I don't recommend musepack to people for general use these days, and atrac users shouldn't either.

Do whatever you think that it might be a wise idea. But please don't expect anyone to understand your decision without a convincing reasoning.

That is exaclty what is meant by "dead".

1) Apparently, it is still being developed. They added more bitrates this year, and they recently released another update of SonicStage. This version rips very fast compared to other rippers (and versions of SonicStage). I think that the latest version of SonicStage is a nice program.

2) Which independent tests have you seen? Links please. The only one I have seen is from 2004, where Atrac3 files at 132 kbs is compared to other formats at 128 kbs. The most recent version of Atrac is Atrac3plus. I would have liked to see the 48 kbs and 64 kbs versions of this compared to others.

Trondis

If that's the case, I would say it was never alive!

It's possibly that the original ATRAC DSP required three discrete chips, by the time ATRAC3 came along it was one chip and some process shrinks had happened.

ATRAC is oficially dead. Just in case someone missed the news.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/30/so-long...thing/#comments

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/portablemusic...s/2007/08/atrac

It's dead in our part of the world, but not for Japan. They are still releasing new models there that support Atrac. More info on this here: [url=http://www.atraclife.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=4131 ]Atraclife[/url]

Why are the Japanese always getting the best technology? Atrac is still gapless, consumes less power and provides better sound quality than the competition.

Please point me to statistically valid listening tests which prove that this old and dead codec is better than ANY other modern codec.

Why do you even bother asking?

This would all be fine if there were computer drives for the MiniDisc. Using a rackmount player you are forced to write the disc in realtime and later spend awful lot of energy adding TOC entries for new tracks, or merging automatically split ones.

Also probably that most people don't care about how awful their music sounds.

Why would mini disc sound better than mp3 players?!

Atrac can't be the reason. Atrac almost always finishes last when compared to other codecs in ABX listening tests here at Hydrogenaudio.

Back in the day, Mini Disc used to be one of the best methods for recording digital audio. I could carry around the mini disc player/recorder and a pocket microphone. I would get very good results at concerts and for meetings, much better than pocket tape recorders. Now that we have digital recorders that use flash memory, pocket PC's, PDA's, camera phones, etc., I find the need for Mini Discs is pretty much gone. I now have way too many devices that can still provide high quality recordings when compared to MD and I am not forced into a proprietary technology (correct me if I am wrong but I thought MD was developed and made by Sony while other companies tapped in on the player market).

Hell, I can get good results by using a 3rd party accessory with my iPod. I am glad that ATRAC3 is dead. Seriously, it didn't do anything for me. The blind tests conducted oh so long ago showed that it was just terrible and I thought it was crappy how Sony made people adapt to that format when they first released their digital audio players. Ding dong the witch is dead. That is all I have to say. Now Sony just needs to get rid of their other crappy formats and start focusing on making good, universal products/formats along with other companies.

I am basing this on my own ears. Atrac3plus wasn't considered in the recent 64 kbs test. So there is no statistically valid listening test that prove that it is worse than other "modern" codecs either.

I don't think I am the only one that consideres Atrac3Plus at 64 kbs to be an excellent codec. Just read this:

http://www.atraclife.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=4155

Too bad that the most successful company in that area (Apple) has a proprietary/closed business model. Microsoft has already jumped the bandwagon with the closed Zune ecosystem which might not be a great success but certainly sells better than the old, relatively open licensable MTP+WMA "everyone can license it and build hardware and music stores as they wish" model they pushed before. Although we (ie, power user community) don't like it, commercially the market is moving towards closed "walled gardens".

I do not doubt this codec to be "excellent" and I simply have no idea about ATRAC because I don't need it and I don't know how to atrac.... But see the development at AAC (HE) or Vorbis at low bitrates. They offer surprisingly good quality at such low bitrates. I doubt there's an encoder out there which would be able to offer remarkably better results.

Ah, I see. You are one out of 3 or 4.

I don't understand what all the fuss is about. The moderator just threatened to throw me out unless I provided scientific proof for my claims. And everybody seems to get angry or sarcastic if Atrac is mentioned. But, Atrac is now dead for the future, at least for us Europeans. I am sorry for that. The Japanese are more lucky. They get new players with both HE-AAC support and Atrac3Plus.

I don't have scientific proof that Atrac is better than other modern codecs, of course. I have never seen tests that compare these. It is merely an opinion. But consider this: Low bitrates are for portable devices, in my opinion. Recently there was a thread in this forum: "Where is the support for HE-AAC?" This revealed that the support was almost absent, and if it was, the batteries was drained very fast. I don't know how the situation is for WMA pro or Vorbis, but I suspect that it is the same. So which codecs exists for portable devices today? I guess iTunes AAC for iPods and Atrac3Plus for Sonys. I have seen a few comparisons between iPods and Sonys, and Sony seems to be the winner every time. But that might be the hardware. The only devices that can play both HE-AAC and Atrac3Plus today, to my knowlegde, is the new Sony series that are released in Japan only. There you could probably make objective tests to see what is best. But, apparently, Sony hasn't implemented gapless playback with AAC or other codecs yet. That only works with Atrac. I wouldn't even consider buying a device that doesn't support gapless playback - it is just as important as good sound. So Atrac wins for me. But when my players dies, and if there are no Atrac devices to buy, I suppose that I would be forced to buy an iPod and rip all my CDs again to AAC.

There is this thing called ABX double blind listening test. It takes the placebo effect out of sound quality comparisons.

ATRAC was ABXed here before and almost always lost shamefully to other codecs.

Just search the forum and you will see it