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Converting Audio to Sony's ATRAC Format?

Posted by Cliff on 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?"

5 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. ATRAC3plus by thesp · · Score: 5, Informative

    ATRAC3plus 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 about releasing details of the licensing, so I haven't found anything more detailed about their licensing strategy than this. This paper also gives some peripheral insight.

  2. What model do you have? by karnal · · Score: 4, Informative

    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?

    --
    Karnal
  3. SonicStudio by thesp · · Score: 2, Informative

    I am aware that SonicStudio has licensed ATRAC3plus from Sony for their N-code project, but this is probably a rather heavy-duty 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.

  4. Use Nero's ImageDrive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Here's an ACM codec by menders · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://www.minidisc.org/atrac3.zip

    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 if you have any further questions.