Sony to Launch Online Music Service

[Skull Leader]

Hey, ATRAC is no chump...

Originally posted by BwanaZulia

To be fair, it was the best format years ago before MP3 hit the scenes. It was tiny and a great tape replacement.

Absolutely true. I STILL own my original RZ-50 portable MD recorder that I bought in 1998, it would the take direct digital optical output from my CD player (what else did back then!) to MD at x1, complete with preseved track marks and SEAMLESS GAPS! Yes that's right, something we still don't have on the iPod to this day! (along with recording)

At that time, MP3 encoders were VERY lossy, and CD ripping technology on the PC was a disaster in terms of quality until late 2000. I remember that the first version of EAC (Exact Audio Copy) I tried was the only one that wouldn't produce skips and sparks in rips and was 1/3rd Real Time!

To all the nay-sayers out there, ATRAC is probably the best music compression ever created ( but I'm only referring to the 'SP' or full length codec as I have never used the more compressed ones). At aprox. 1/3rd the size of uncompressed, it is virtually impossible to distinguish between the original (can you REALLY say that about AAC, even 192kps or higher? C'mon). The biggest weakness is that it will not allow you to extract digitaly from the player....but analog capture via Line-In on my PowerBook to AIFF preserves the sound QUITE well. I still consider it 'original' source it's that good. No problem going back down to 192kps AAC without any transcoding artifacts.

Maybe another propreitary format will go nowhere, granted. But PLEASE do not dismiss Sony's technology as you would WMA and the like, ATRAC DOES have much develpoment history behind it and a lot of credibility. I'd put money on ATRAC3 being the best compression codec out there technology-wise, even if their players/Music Store aren't. (Yes, very much like BETA!)

That being said, my entrie MD collection of yore is now safely on my PowerBook in 192kps AAC. But if I COULD import the raw ATRAC tracks into iTunes to be played natively with the rest of my collection, that would be a whole other story. I'd love to see what a newly developed AAC equilvalent version of ATRAC would do...

 

[splashman]

Re: Hey, ATRAC is no chump...

Originally posted by Skull Leader
Maybe another propreitary format will go nowhere, granted. But PLEASE do not dismiss Sony's technology as you would WMA and the like, ATRAC DOES have much develpoment history behind it and a lot of credibility. I'd put money on ATRAC3 being the best compression codec out there technology-wise, even if their players/Music Store aren't. (Yes, very much like BETA!)

With the following question, I'm not trying to be rude -- I'm just trying to look at this from the consumer's point of view. So here's the question: WHY SHOULD I CARE?

Why should I care that ATRAC (which I never heard of before today) has impressive specs and an impressive development history and an impressive company behind it? Is that going to improve my listening experience? If I'm Joe consumer, the answer is a big, fat "NO!"

I'm a musician, and I hang out with musicians and non-musicians, but I don't know a SINGLE person who uses an MD player. I know one who owns one, and I just called him to ask if he still uses it. He said he "thinks it's around somewhere."

As has been posted many, many times before, only the geeks care about specs. The music player market as a whole cares about three things (not necessarily in this order):
(a) What's hot
(b) What's easy
(c) What's cheap

MD, as far as the larger market is concerned, is dead. Get over it.

 

[BWhaler]

This is going to crash and burn.

Their own proprietary file system?

When will Sony ever learn?

And yes, MD is dead, dead, dead.

 

[~Shard~]

Originally posted by BWhaler

And yes, MD is dead, dead, dead.

I'm asking this honestly, and not with sarcasm - is MD dead? I thought it was quite popular in Japan and the UK - has been for years and years and still is. By all means correct me if I'm wrong though. Perhaps a poster from overseas would care to address this as well? I was always under the assumption that MD was still big overseas...

 

[splashman]

Originally posted by ~Shard~
I'm asking this honestly, and not with sarcasm - is MD dead? I thought it was quite popular in Japan and the UK - has been for years and years and still is. By all means correct me if I'm wrong though. Perhaps a poster from overseas would care to address this as well? I was always under the assumption that MD was still big overseas...

For myself, I should have clarified that MD is dead in the U.S., and I'm guessing that the other posters meant that as well. I have no idea how the MD is doing elsewhere, and would be interested to know. Sorry about the overly-general generality . . .

 

[banzaiman]

Here's Sony's answer to iPod mini

Here's Sony's answer to iPod mini (in Japanese). The article says that it's a HD-based 2GB player and it is the "smallest" and "lightest" in the world (according to Sony, anyway). Estimated street price of 35,000 yen (USD 320). I don't think Apple has announced iPod mini's price for the Japanese market yet.

 

[iPC]

I love the assumptions that Americans make. "It's not popular here, so it must be dead." If you want an idea of how far behind American tech toys are, just look at the Japanese cell phone market. 3G is old news, and 3.5G is coming. In the US, it's all about the picture phone....

MD players are a cool idea. Every MD is just a playlist. Now with the super high density MD's, you can do it all at once if you want (a la iPod).

As to file format, who cares? Sony ho's are the same as Mac ho's. "XXX is the best" and so on. And I think we know who is bigger... as well as SonyMusic.

And it does not have to rule the American market to be popular. In fact, it could be #1 in the world, and never be released for the American market.

GET A CLUE.

 

[the_dalex]

Sony is not with the program. They are worse than Microsoft and Apple combined when it comes to incompatible proprietary technology. MD was a good technology, and still is, but it never made it as a consumer product here in the US, mostly because Sony didn't market it well or price the players appropriately. They just put it out there and expected it to sell because of the Sony name or some sort of transcontinental word-of-mouth.

Besides, the MD was best known for full-spectrum audio recording, and that is something most consumers don't want or need to do. It uses what are, IMHO, large discs which are subject to all of those fun problems discs run into (dirt, mechanical difficulties, magnetic storage on the recordable discs). I personally am trying to get away from removable discs of all types, and the consumer market is as well. How many consumers would carry multiple 1GB minidiscs, and how many would just try to fit what they want onto one disc to avoid having to carry extras, swap them out, etc? It's time to let the MD die as a consumer device.

They just announced a product that, in my opinion, is inferior to the mini iPod and costs more, using the most proprietary format available. At least I can play AAC songs with iTunes on a Mac or PC, use those songs in my movie or photo slideshow projects, stream the files to friends on my network, put them on my iPod without any extra steps or restrictions... is Sony going to make me "check out" and "check in" all of my converted MP3s to blindly copyprotect something that may not even be copyrighted in the first place, as they did with all previous network walkmans?

Sony is only going to sell these products to people with Sony computers, as a general rule. I don't expect anybody else would have a pleasant experience with these devices. At least the iPod works on all Windows machines and all Macs, making it the most compatible player out there by default.

 

[the_dalex]

Hmmm, am I reading this right? You won't be able to burn purchased Sony music to a CD?

If that is true, they WILL fail.

 

[wombat2]

At least the iPod works on all Windows machines and all Macs, making it the most compatible player out there by default.

Depends how you define compatible. My Mac G4 has a DVD-ROM, so I can't burn CDs on it. No problem, my PC has a DVD-RW ... the really popular one by Sony. So I download about 15 songs from iTunes, and try to burn to the disc - only to learn that my Sony DVD-RW isn't recognized. Yes, I have the latest version.

Meanwhile, I downloaded an album last night from walmart.com ... $8.88 and it works fine.

Something that works well with 4% of the market, and works hit and miss with 95% of the market, isn't really "the most compatible" IMO. Better to work well with 95% and not work at all with 4%, in terms of "most compatible".

I wish that the industry would mature to the point where these issues don't exist, and we choose players, music stores etc based on meaningful features rather than what we're locked into or out of.

 

[Sedulous]

Heh, as I understand, the iPod is very popular in Japan.

 

[Digital Alchemy]

New 1 gig discs work with Net MD players?

...But for an already massive installed base of MD players round the world, for which these new 1 gig disks will be backwards compatible - the emergence of ...

I just bought a Net MD walkman, and have 30 days to return it if I need to. I must know... where did you get this info? If you are correct in saying that these disks are compatible with my old Net MD player, then I will keep the player, but If not, I am gonna buy a used Ipod or Nomad Zen...

Are you assuming backwards compatability or do you know for a fact that the new 1 GB disc will work with older players?