New Compression Algorithm

jryan · Post by **jryan** » Sat Jul 05, 2003 8:38 pm

Hey Everyone,

I just spent a week out of town, and I came across the most interesting thing while I was shopping at a FutureShop today. I was in the market for a new discman, and I like Sony, so I was checking out some of thier newer models. I was looking for something that could handle MP3, CD/R, CD/RW ect.. and I found what I was looking for. It's an Atrac3plus Discman (model D-NE510). I was a little puzzled when I saw the word "Atrac". It was then explained to me that Sony has invented a new format for compressing audio, allowing you to create discs using the Atrac3plus specification and theoretically fitting up to 490 songs on one CD. It compresses the audio to 1/20th of the size, whereas MP3 compresses it to 1/10th of the original size. Now, although this is not a universal standard and can only be read by Sony Atrac3 complient portable systems, I still thought this was a wonderful thing that I should mention. Surf on over to http://www.sonystyle.com/ and have a look... you might even be able to find more information on the Atrac3 system. What path will it take? Only time will tell.

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Sat Jul 05, 2003 8:47 pm

Wow that is cool! I wonder if there's any quality loss? Probably not much. Quite interesting!

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Chris Vogel · Post by **Chris Vogel** » Sat Jul 05, 2003 11:08 pm

WOW! That is cool! 1/20th the size?

That's great.

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rovingcowboy · Post by **rovingcowboy** » Wed Jul 09, 2003 6:09 pm

i also am wondering if there is any loss of quilty in sound. that is a very small size to compress them to.

but i am not going to change to a new format ogg is good for me since i have 81 hours of songs in that format already i am not going to convert and retype all them tags.

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manadren_it · Post by **manadren_it** » Fri Jul 11, 2003 7:19 am

I'm kinda wondering about the quality too. Also I'm kinda worried about the fact that sony is pushing this. I'm not saying sony makes bad hardware, but considering the fact that sony is a huge company that also has it's hands in the music and movie industries, do you really think it's in sony's best interest to make a friendly compressed audio format?

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jryan · Post by **jryan** » Fri Jul 11, 2003 9:55 pm

Now that I read some of the replies, I noticed a few things that I should have clarified in the initial post.

1) The compression format for Sony Atrac is only readable on Atrac-complient devices, thus RovingCowboy is safe, because it can't be read on your comp. (A bit of a jip, but hey, you can't win 'em all)

2) The quality remains high, even on the compressed files, with bitrates being optional at 48kbps, 64kbps, 66kbps, 105kbps and finally 132kbps.

3) The format ATRAC3 stands for "Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding3" for those who wanted to know.

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Chris Vogel · Post by **Chris Vogel** » Fri Jul 11, 2003 11:00 pm

I saw a commercial for this earlier tonight.

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