Sony Finally Gets the Message on ATRAC

I've complained to Sony since they released their first MiniDisc players about the hassles of converting to their "better than yours" music format. Pffft.

I returned the unit and never looked back. I enjoy my ipod, and Sony isn't going to make up for the last ten years of good hardware / bad customer relations with this admission that they will NOW grace me with MP3 support. Pffft - go pound sand Sony, Apple schooled you!

Interesting, they had native support for mp3's with their clie line. Too bad they think they can strong arm us consumers into a format "they and only they strongly support". Well I still love you sony, thick headed and all.....But an iPod will be under my tree this year, sorry! :/

I'm sad Sony is giving in to the inferior MP3 standards. ATRA just sounds better, but most people think cheap instead of quality so Sony has to step down again.

You would think they would have learned with Beta.Sony has missed the boat ounce again.I will never buy a product that only supports its own not very popular format.After buying an ipod
I finally see why its so popular.It is the best HD player.

I have been a fan of the NET-MD mini discs for a while now. The player is a very small & lightweight unit, and the battery lasts for ages. You can easily put 3 CD's worth of music on a minidisc (at 4x compression). All my music is on CDs anyway now (tape & LPs long gone) and the sonicstage software translates them easily to ATRAC. If I were to have any MP3s the sonicstage software translates them to ATRAC too. I don't really see what the fuss is about.

My only major gripe is with CDs which are blocked from playing in computer drives (some new copy protection mechanism) - I just won't buy those CDs - but this is a problem whatever music format you use (I guess if you want that music illegal downloads seem the only way!! - talk about an own goal for the music industry!!)

You Sony supporters are whack. THey dont have to offer ONLY the inferior mp3 format -- they just have to offer it with ATRAC and give their customers the choice of which to use. But they didnt give us that choice, and so we didnt give them our money.

I stop buying Sony electronic for this exact reason.
What a good choice. I've discovered many new products since.

I have never had a problem with any of the Sony products I have purchased over the years.

Furthermore I am excited to check out their version of what to play an MP3 on - because it is going to rock! That new tiny Playstation is also going to be one hot ticket!

I bought the hard-disk Network Walkman (NW-HD1) Friday night and have been totally in love with it. It's thin and tiny, has a 20+ hour battery life, and the battery lasts 3 years and *can* be replaced. Above all, sound quality is great. I ripped CDs and converted my old MP3s to ATRAC3Plus 64kbps, and the sound quality is amazing. I trained as a jazz musician so I qualify to have my 2 cents on this... While for classical and jazz lossless is *always* the best, the ATRACT compression works wonderfully. I'm a new convert and really love my HD Walkman. I do hope Sony adds MP3 playback upgrade if it wants to "move the metal", since most American users (who are doubtless stupid) still prefer the inferior but vastly available MP3 format.

BTW, I personally find the new SonicStage software easy to use (even more intuitive and easiers on the eyes than WMP 10 and iTunes) and stable on my XP Home system. MP3 conversion is a pain but there's very little loss of quality. Sony's Connect music store is also a breeze to use. I have no problem with Sony's copy protection approach. Anyone who's ever dabbled in the music business, even someone like me who didn't succeed, appreciates protection of intelectual property. (But my main problems with MP3 is it's an older format and hence not as good as the newer encoding formats like ATRAC3Plus, WMA and Ogg.) Anyway, the HD Walkman is the best $400 I've spent in a long time.

Minidisc..... a wonderful format thats sold short due to narrow mindedness of its parents. Come on Sony, your killing your own product here. If you were to first, build in support for MP3 (everyone is using this anyway) and second, build equipment to support it, (dieing to see car audio and boombox with BOTH minidisc and CD drives with BOTH MP3 and ATRAC support) I love my MD but the truth is that it is really only an alternative in situations where you would listen to music with headphones. They are great on the plane or while jogging. However, this limits the format too much. Give people a reason to leave their fragile CD's at home. Give us a product to use everywhere, like in the car, on the boat, at the pool, or whereever people gather.

I 've just bought Sony's NW-HD1 and I have to say that sony makes wonderful gadgets. My problem is that I have most of my music on MDs (standard & LP); I've tried to transfer the content of thses MDs onto the library of teh OpenMG but I couldn't. Does anyone know a way of doing this, or is it just impossible to do? Anyone's help would be much appreciated.

I purchased a Sony Walkman MZ-NH1 a couple of weeks ago, and a new computer running Win XP and also a Sony DVD/CD player capable of playing MP3 files. My main goal is to be able to record live workshops and speeches, transfer them to the PC for manipulation and editing, and then write MP3 CD's for playing on my own player and other people's.

I am pleased with the recording quality, but VERY disappointed in the limitations of the software.

So far, I've run up against these, seemingly artificial limitations.

Once the tracks are transferred to the PC with Sonic Stage, the tracks may not be combined, either on the PC, nor further on the NH1, once the transfer is done, though I could before the transfer.

The tracks may only be transferred once to the PC, never again.

It does not allow the conversion of ATRAC tracks to MP3, nor the burning of the ATRAC files to CD Audio file format.

The Sony DVD/CD player I purchased a few days ago cannot play ATRAC3, only Audio and MP3.

What this means is that, for reasons I don't fully understand, I cannot do what I purchased this for and what I was told by the salesperson I would be able to do? It appears that the software was designed by copywrite lawyers, not customer service oriented people. And what I'm recording is my business, not Sony's. Why should they restrict how I copy it to CD's? Anybody know of workarounds? If not, I'm shipping it back for a refund.

Thank you.
Paul

I purchased a Sony Walkman MZ-NH1 a couple of weeks ago, and a new computer running Win XP and also a Sony DVD/CD player capable of playing MP3 files. My main goal is to be able to record live workshops and speeches, transfer them to the PC for manipulation and editing, and then write MP3 CD's for playing on my own player and other people's.

I am pleased with the recording quality, but VERY disappointed in the limitations of the software.

So far, I've run up against these, seemingly artificial limitations.

Once the tracks are transferred to the PC with Sonic Stage, the tracks may not be combined, either on the PC, nor further on the NH1, once the transfer is done, though I could before the transfer.

The tracks may only be transferred once to the PC, never again.

It does not allow the conversion of ATRAC tracks to MP3, nor the burning of the ATRAC files to CD Audio file format.

The Sony DVD/CD player I purchased a few days ago cannot play ATRAC3, only Audio and MP3.

What this means is that, for reasons I don't fully understand, I cannot do what I purchased this for and what I was told by the salesperson I would be able to do? It appears that the software was designed by copywrite lawyers, not customer service oriented people. And what I'm recording is my business, not Sony's. Why should they restrict how I copy it to CD's? Anybody know of workarounds? If not, I'm shipping it back for a refund.

Thank you.
Paul

Sony bought Sound Forge last year and never rewired it to support ATRAC. The writing was on the wall already, apparently.

To Paul:

Check out forums.minidisc.org for info on some info on how to deal with your uploaded recordings on Hi-MD equipment. Very useful site. Sony is also working on some wave convertor app to allow people to convert uploaded MD recordings to WAV format for use as consumers see fit. Keep an eye out on the 'net.

Paul,

You can download from minidisc.org a 3rd party wav converter for sonic stage. I've used it and it works very well. Its called "HI-MD renderer"
Enjoy.

Whatever. Sony is wedded to proprietry systems, and until they get over it (like Apple did a few years ago, supporting the best of both worlds) they will suffer.

Speaking of Apple, Sony's proprietary schemes require Windows PCs. I used to be a big Minidisc fan, but gave up when they started introducing Windows-only features like NetMD.

I have been a Big MD fan for years, I just bought the new NW-HD1 and I can say that I love it, thirty hours on the battary is amazing. I have a ton of MP3 and with sonic stage I have no problems converting to ATRAC plus at 64k, I would like to hear and MP3 at 64k. Its not going to sound good at all. Sony has always made amazing produces and I have never had any problems with sony products. I guess its just a matter of taste and what we are use to. I am not saying anything bad about MP3 I think its and amazing format as well. I dont know much about the IPOD but I hear that you cannot replace the battary and that is what has turned me off on buying one. ATRAC MP3 its all good.

I was a die-hard MD fan since 1995, when I bought it in order to be able to record my old cassette tapes. I migrated up the food chain to NetMD a couple years ago. When you are a MD fanatic, you are used to having to find ways around Sony's incompetence, like finding ways to upload through the line-out, etc. The non-mp3 support was always annoying, but I liked Atrac anyway and i had to rip CDs to one format or the other anyway so I didn't care.

With the release of Hi-MD, I was faced with an upgrade choice. Since I listen to music mostly in the car, I waited for Sony to release a Hi-MD car player. They are not going to do it. so I finally accepted that I will just not have a new solution for the car.

To cut a long story short, I finally got an Archos AV-420 that does everything under the sun. I'll still keep my NetMD for the car. To all you MD fans out there, you will be amazed how quickly you forget MD once you get a cool harddisk player . Instead of opening your new toy and going to minidisc.org to find out all the cool hacks people have done to get around Sony's incompetence, you just open it, transfer whatever music you have in whatever format, and go. It is an unbelievable feeling not to need things like himd-renderer and winNMD to make up for things that don't work. Take the plunge, you won't regret it, just make sure you get the right player for what you need it for.

The problem is, a lot of people have huge MP3 archives (and like me if you listen to stuff from Japan (living in England)) It's not easy to find the name of the songs, or even somewhere that sells it.

So MP3 to some people is effectively their master copy. And transcoding to another format, better or not is plain retarded. Simply because you won't feel the benefit of ATRAC3.

I'm using an Athlon64 3400+, and I'm having to transcode 1800 MP3 files of varying bitrate to ATRAC3, the process has been going hours already (I appreciate it's a large number of tracks, but even single tracks take a while) and the software has crashed once already through no fault of my own.

I'm sorely dissapointed, but I'm forwarding this to Sony, and waiting for the new firmware

Sony has sort of quazi-supported MP3s already. I own a Sony portable CD player with a built-in radio that supports audio CDs, Atrac3plus files AND mp3s. Sure, CDs only hold 700MB but it's removeable, standard media and you get the option of choosing between the encoding formats.

I'm also a huge Minidic fan, and like many others hate all the digital rights management that comes with it, but overall I value being able to make high-quality recordings with a microphone more than I value being able to take a lot of music around with me. I have the Atrac/mp3 CD player for that.

So, even though it can't all be done on one device, there are options.

-Nathan

You know, as I was reading these comments, I realized many people liked the ATRAC compression when it was for MD, but not on this new NetWalkman. Did you guys realize the reason you can put the same amount of music on a 2.5" MD as a regular CD was because of this compression technology?

Oh, and as a correction to some people who haven't actually tried the software with the player themselves, you can leave the files on your computer in MP3 format and have Sonicstage convert them for transferring purposes only.

As of Dec 22, 2004 I have confirmed through SONY support, the ability for previous NW-HD1 owners to allow for MP3 playback directly! It will cost $20.00 and will have to be shipped out, but with ATRAC3 doubling storage on my home computer (along with original source,MP3) and NOT playing back on either Windows Media Player OR Creative Mediasource, I am sure after the conversion it will be the best MP3 OR ATRAC3 player around. They even offered to call me back tomorrow to advise me when this option will become available.

By the way I would like to thank PC World for the article about SONY's decision to allow MP3 support. It was useful in advising the support team at SONY about this upcoming feature.

yea i just got the nw-hd1 i cant get one of my mp3 to transfer to it i tried the sonysonic stage converter it blows my comp just crashes every time i try to covert to atrac i would think twice about EVER buying anything from sony and the sony support ha forget about it they will have you on the phone for 3 hours just to tell you youd be better of buying 3 cheap mp3 players that work with mp3 that to try to beat your head in to try to make any thing work the only thing i can do is burn cd s then rip them to my nwhd1 but what about all the live sets that are over 80 mins think twice before you buy a 400dollar cd copier

I've just purchased a sony Net MD MZ-NHF800, and after a monumental effort, have managed to record a single minidisc with downloaded music. Great! until i try to play it on my stack HI-FI, with which I get silence, because it does not support ATRAC3plus. SO my question is, How do I burn an MD with the older ATRAC not ATRAC3plus? and is there software other than sonicstage that burns MDs? cause i'm at the point of throwing my laptop through the window.

if anyone does buy one the software crashes on conversion and transfer to atrac. to fix this delete any codec u might have installed or specifically if ffs codec pack then go to start/ my programs/ ffs/ audio filter config and go to mp3 and change mp3lib to disabled. will then work a treat.

I own both an iPod and a NW-HD1. The sony model imho kickes apples ass!!

The sound quality of the ATRAC3 is far superior to MP3 giving my music the depth I searched for and the file size is tiny in comparison.

My 20Gb sony can hold much more than my 40Gb iPod, granted my mp3s are recorded at 192kbs but thats the only way to get them to sound decent and so is a must.

Converting my tunes to ATRAC was easy and no hasstle i just keep two directorys of music (one for MP3 recognised by iTunes and one for ATRACS recognised by SonicStage) This is no problem unless you got limited space on you HD but with 300Gb HDs available now noone should ever run outta space lol.

Three cheers for Sony!

I have a problem that I don't see anyone addressing. I have 500 cds in atrac and cannot give them to any body. Is there anyone that knows how to transfor atrac to mp3 or anything else. I am a new pc owner any I feel I made a mistake putting my collection in this format.

Help!!!!!

Bought a Network Walkman NW-E407 - but have not been able to use it as I canot convert my MP3 files to ATrac3 format - I get a message stating that the file format is not supported - even if I use sonic stage to rip the CD and then try to transfere it to the player. I can only import wav format has selecting any other option gives an error "please try again".

Thanks

Sony could make life so much easier for themselves and for the customer, i just bought the VGF AP1L hard disk based music player, it was advertised in the shop as an MP3 player which is wrong, as it doesn't play MP3s at all, all music has to be converted into their ATRAC format which is a real pain as i have over 14,500 files. Even on a fast PC this would take most of the day to convert and all i wanted was to copy the files onto the player and play them, not spend ages messing around with their unreliable software, and it is very unreliable but no, Sony has to force me to use their format .. there is just no need to introduce yet another format i'm perfectly happy with MP3s and as far as i am concerned there is little difference in sound quality between the two, if anything ATRAC sounds slightly poorer

WELL>>>>>> People really into there media should consider the ATRAC 3 Format. I mean if the Ipod supported this format it would mean almost 4 or maybe even 5x the music of a full ipod using only mp3 format. Its only a consideration though. Be happy with your ipod but when sony introduces a harddrive player supporting atrac3 format, sony costumers may be enjoying more music even when your 40 gig ipod is full. I use the Atrac3 format on my PSP and I have crammed 184 songs in there which only takes up 1/2 a gig and sacrifices no sound quality.

You do the math

I, personally, have no problem with the ATRAC format. This is no different that Apple using DRMed AAC for thier iPods.

What I would LIKE to see is Sony provide a program that was as simple and easy to use as iTunes. It would be great if I could just use the iTunes interface for HiMD, but getting Apple and Sony to agree on THAT is pretty slim.

For what it is worth, Sony is dropping Sonic Stage completely. Version 3.2 will be the last SS. Sony is replacing SS with a program called Connect. As to whther this is a new program or just SS in sheep's clothing, we will see.

Sony needs to release software that will allow uploads of Atrac3 to PC. If this is not delivered soon the rest of minidisc owners will update to Ipods, as there is software out there that allows this with Ipod.(seems like a no brainer to me).
Also to Sony claims of not allowing transfer of Minidisc to PC for copyright protection,is doubtful. Isnt it just to keep you buying more junky portable minidisc players as most people have converted their music to minidisc? not allowing transfers kinda forces you to stay in the format....

Copyright protection is evil. My laptop was run over (don't ask) and I had to replace it. Turns out in doing so the 200+ cds that I ripped to Atrac3 have to be re-ripped. Well I won't make that mistake again. I'll be going MP3 and while I'm loathe to buy in to the hype I might just have to get an ipod.

After installing sonicstage all my Mp3 began te make strange noises, even winamp did, so i resinstalled it fixing the problem. Sonicstage is the only program that support atrac3plus burning and i hate it, sony doesn´t let me choose another program, that´s why i think my freedom is being ctu, and as a reply i shall never EVER buy another sony product. I consider they stole my money.

After installing sonicstage all my Mp3 began te make strange noises, even winamp did, so i resinstalled it fixing the problem. Sonicstage is the only program that support atrac3plus burning and i hate it, sony doesn´t let me choose another program, that´s why i think my freedom is being cut, and as a reply i shall never EVER buy another sony product. I consider they stole my money. "·$%"· crap!!.

From a layman's perspective Atrac appears to be a superior product. I have never had a serious problem using it. However I fail to understand why all Sony audio products do not support it (especially home audio products). It seems short sighted by Sony.

I'm a big fan of Sony products when it comes to the attractive design and long battery life but I agree that it's best to stay away from proprietary stuff. For the benefit of the community, you get much faster progress with open standards. As technology evolve and there are more advance technology users, proprierty products may not align well with any business motive.

Does anyone know how I can convert the hundreds of albums I have copied to my PC(using Sony Sonic Stage to save them onto my PC in ATRAC3 or ATRAC 3 Plus format) into a more accessible format (e.g. WMA or MP3)?

Or do I have to copy my CDs from scratch to my PC all over again, using different software?

I bought my first MP3 player - a Sony NW E407. It plays all that is downloaded from cd'c via sonic stage BUT, when I tried to download a recorded radio show via its MP3 button, the download was successful to both sonic stage software and then successfully transferred to the NW E407 BUT it will not play back in the Nw E407. The display says "cannot play". I have tried various websites with audio downloads but none will playback on my Sony NW E407. What can I do.

Hi, I was wondering if any of yall own the Sony NWHD1 and did the firewire upgrade so that you can play mp3s. If so, does anyone know how to tranfer mp3s back to the computer from the player. I tried it in sonicstage and it gives me an error. It only lets me transfer atrac files back. Thanks for the help in advanced!!

Hi i had a small problem and dont want to contact the company because i think can be fixed easily.. a family member (stupid) acidentaly formted my mp3 player is a sony NW-E407 so now it doesnt play the files. I think is just because the files are not there if someone can email me the files inside mp3 i remember it was like 2 folders with about 3 files each i think.. my email is papichulouk@hotmail.co.uk please i would be pleased if someone can help me thank you.

I have had a sony mini disk for 5 years now. I recently got a 5 gig mp3 player from RIO, works great. Only thing is I can't possibly transfer my mini disks. I have at least 20 mini disks of music and language courses, which mostly are from original cds, and to have to start all over again and record them in analog with my computer just seems a little ridiculous.

I also had a problem with the recent SONY bean, which I bought for my girlfriend. It rejected half of my music collection. I've always thought sony has made a great product, but they really should have some compatibility with the rest of the market.

Sonic Stage is up to version 3.4 but lacks the ability to download the entire program - so if you don't have an internet connection and need the new progie - yer S.O.L.
Now here's a kick ... ATRAC format - go ahead and steal the CD's from MY CAR - HA! they're useless unless U can play 'em - converted to ATRAC - Sony supports several formats on their CD CAR STEREO line including WMA, MP3 and ATRAC. MD players aren't DEAD just yet ... Sure, propriatery formats sux most of the time-not playing MP3 onna MD player SUX too-but ya can get more songs on that silly little disk!!

I HAVE A SONY BEAN, AND MY STORY GOES AS FOLLOWS. IN ORDER TO PURCHASE MUSIC FOR THIS THING, YOU ARE REQUIRED TO HAVE A CREDIT CARD. UNDERSTANDABLY, AND NOT HAVING POSSESSION OF A CREDIT CARD TO PURCHASE THIS MUSIC, I GO TO THE SONY STORE TO PURCHASE A GIFT CARD WITH THE INTENTION TO PURCHASE THE MUSIC. LONG STORY SHORT... THE GIFT CARD IS ONLY FOR PRODUCTS IN THE STORE AND NOT FOR ON-LINE