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Topic: ATRAC3plus quality (Read 23713 times) previous topic - next topic
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ATRAC3plus quality

I just saw that Sony came up with a new cool player NW-MS70D and also is going to come up with a series of CD players that support ATRAC3plus.

I think construction and engineeringwise Sony players are extremely good. But unfortunately they use proprietary technologies like ATRAC and Memory Stick.

Now they claim good qualities with 64kbps encoding for ATRAC3Plus, which sounds fishy. I'd like to test it though but don't have any Japanese  So could someone download and compare the results ? I know there was some English version of Sonic Stage 1.5 freely available somewhere but I can't find it anymore.

By the way does anyone know how the tagging system works for ATRAC3(plus) ?
The object of mankind lies in its highest individuals.
One must have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #1 –
Don't get too excited. I have checked out ATRAC3Plus through some downloaded Sony software earlier this year, and while it is a very slight improvement over the previous 66 kbit ATRAC3, it is still not very impressive, and you get significantly better quality with Vorbis and others at similar bit rates.

Like the previous ATRAC3 66 kbit (LP4) available on my current MD, the music with ATRAC3plus starts to get very watery and fragile at times. Sorry to use such subjective terms, but if you listen to a very low bitrate MP3, you'll hear something similar. Attacks in the music like percussion get smeared, and sustained notes (piano) start to break up. Where ATRAC3plus has improved slightly is in the higher frequencies. The earlier one has a very obvious low pass cut off filter in place, which is not so obvious in the latest version. (I haven't checked out graphs to confirm this though.)

It isn't too impressive to me. Possibly useful to really cram more music in a small space if you have no other format options, and only for listening at low volumes/noisy environments.

ATRAC3/plus/etc have their own tags built into the format, and can only readily be edited using the player hardware, or ATRAC specific software.

I agree that Sony make excellent units. The hardware itself and the audio quality (besides ATRAC) is excellent. Unfortunately, they also go for their proprietry format to protect their recorded music business.

Den.

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #2 –
I tested too the atrac3+ quality (the software SonicStage 1.5 is bundled with an atrac3+ codec).
There are some immediate improvements over LP4 recording : more trebles (higher lowpass), and a better stereo (LP4 is close to mono). however, the artifact level is higher too. On strong attacks, the result is quite funny.

You can download a sample here : http://membres.lycos.fr/guruboolez/

The archive is named : Grincements de porte, encodé en ATRAC3 & ATRAC3+
Wavpack Hybrid -c4hx6

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #3 –
Wow, that's not exactly what I would call high-performance. With the sample(s) you provide, even at 132kbps, ATRAC3 sounds terrible ("whooshing" sound near the middle of the sample), which surprised me, as so many people on the MD boards swear by LP2. ATRAC3+ sounds worse (to my ears) than LP4 @ 66kbps. I'd take near-mono sound over "sparkling" artifacts anyday, though LP4 admittedly sucks by it's own merit. I've done ABX testing with ATRAC1-Type R, but never ATRAC3/+ (even when I briefly owned a Net-MD recorder).

It might be interesting to encode the same sample using RealAudio8 (which uses ATRAC3) to see if the 64kbps and 44kbps variants sound similarly to ATRAC3+ at 64/48kbps. I have a hunch that Sony simply incorporated codec "improvements" (joint stereo switching, lowpass cutoff) from their version of RealAudio into the "regular" ATRAC3 codec and called it "ATRAC3+".

Thanks for the samples, Guruboolez.

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #4 –
You're welcome.
But don't conclude anything about your ATRAC3+/ATRAC3 LP4 preferences. This sample is of course very special, very hard to encode, with a lot of transients. Standard ATRAC is more regular here, less trebles but less artifacts. In general, I would bet than many people will prefer ATRAC3+ than LP4 encodings.
Wavpack Hybrid -c4hx6

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #5 –
Quote
You're welcome.
But don't conclude anything about your ATRAC3+/ATRAC3 LP4 preferences. This sample is of course very special, very hard to encode, with a lot of transients. Standard ATRAC is more regular here, less trebles but less artifacts. In general, I would bet than many people will prefer ATRAC3+ than LP4 encodings.

Yeah, that's true. I guess it is a matter of taste....I personally prefer low-bandwidth (but less artifacts) over higher bandwidth/more artifacts. This means that given the choice, I would take a 22.05Khz, 64kbps MP3 over a 64kbps, 44.1Khz wma, which has a higher cutoff, but more annoying artifacts. I'm willing to side with you on the ATRAC3+ issue...many novice listeners probably (will) think that its sounds better than LP4 for the same reasons why some people prefer wma over mp3 at 64kbps.

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #7 –
How do you compare a LP2 ATRAC in quality to LAME MP3 128kbps ?
The object of mankind lies in its highest individuals.
One must have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #8 –
Quote
How do you compare a LP2 ATRAC in quality to LAME MP3 128kbps ?

Similar, though slightly different. ATRAC3 @132kbps, being a transform codec, suffers from many of the problems of mp3 at that bitrate, including the characteristic pre-echo and smeared transients. It's lowpass seems to be at 15 or 16Khz, which is a tad lower than the 17.5Khz lowpass found in --ap 128 encodings. Comparing the two, I've found that ATRAC3 132kbps sounds "grainy" in comparison to the orginal...it's hard to explain, but I ABX'ed it every time. One thing that LP2 does not seem to suffer is the occasional flanging or "swishiness" of a 128kbps MP3, at least with the test material that I have used (hard-to-encode jazz and rock samples; I didn't bother with fatboy and creaking samples as it was pretty obvious that both would fail at this bitrate  ) In short, I find them to be roughly the same, with LP2 perhaps doing better in a few cases.

One thing is certain: LP2 does not live up to it's MD fanatic claims of "it sounds like a 160-192kbps mp3" or worse yet, "it sounds better than a 320kbps mp3" (both of which I frequently encountered when I was active in the MD community). Such claims are easily put to rest when one does blind testing, as objectivity gives more consistent results than fanaticism.

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #9 –
Quote
How do you compare a LP2 ATRAC in quality to LAME MP3 128kbps ?

I compared LP2 encodings (= ATRAC3 132 kbps CBR, generated & decoded on SonicStage 1.5) and Lame ABR 132 kbps (--preset). I mostly tried on classical music, various samples & instruments, difficult and not to difficult to encode.
I ABXed them, and came to the conclusion that lame ABR more accurate was. Instruments are more detailed, and some artifacts I heard with LP2 weren't audible with mp3 lame. I haven't really tested with pop/rock music. There are some exception of course, but in general, mp3 was better, at least for classical stuff.

Nevertheless, encoding speed difference are really impressive. On my Duron 800, Atrac3 encoding speed with SonicStage is 17x ; --alt-preset ABR is only x3-3.5... If I force LAME to be as fast as his challenger, quality is absolutely awful (Gogo or Fhg fastenc are better challenger for this particular test).


EDIT
Cygnus X1 > lowpass for LP2 is approx. 17000 Hz.
Wavpack Hybrid -c4hx6

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #10 –
Quote
Quote
How do you compare a LP2 ATRAC in quality to LAME MP3 128kbps ?

I compared LP2 encodings (= ATRAC3 132 kbps CBR, generated & decoded on SonicStage 1.5) and Lame ABR 132 kbps (--preset). I mostly tried on classical music, various sample & instruments, difficult and not to difficult to encode.
I ABXed them, and came to the conclusion that lame ABR more accurate is. Instruments are more detailed, and some artifacts I heard with LP2 weren't audible with mp3 lame. I haven't really tested with pop/rock music. There are some exception of course, but in general, mp3 was better, at least for classical stuff.

Nevertheless, encoding speed difference are really impressive. On my Duron 800, Atrac3 encoding speed with SonicStage is 17x ; --alt-preset ABR is only x3-3.5... If I force LAME to be as fast as his challenger, quality is absolutely awful (Gogo or Fhg fastenc are better challenger for this particular test).

Yes, I found that with classical samples, MP3 sounded more detailed, especially in the woodwinds and other harder-to-encode instruments. LP2 sounded "flatter" and was realitivly easy to ABX (I used some Stravinsky and Prokofiev samples, and usually guessed 10 times out of 10). With rock, MP3 seems to flange more, but I'd have to do more testing to make sure that the samples I used are representitive of rock music in general. SonicStage is very fast though!

(PS--On my old MD recorder, one of the first MDLP models, the hardware codec cut off lower than 16Khz. I think that newer software codecs probably have raised it since then. My apologies for giving outdated info. Thanks for the correction!)

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #11 –
Hmm, maybe an ATRAC decoder is easier and costs less to make (as encoding is faster) and that could explain why Sony is this much into ATRAC.

How would you compare the stereo separation in MP3 128 vs. ATRAC LP2? I am sure LP2 could not come close to 320kbps MP3 quality as some proponents claim. And I actually think that ATRAC is inferior for my choice because it is proprietary, and there're no choices in encoders, tagging system is unknown... But the new Sony NW-MS70D seems so good looking  I am really tempted.

I guess I'll get the Sony D-NE1 which decodes MP3 and looks quite cool and cheaper but bulkier. I-River imp-550 is very cool as well, but as I said Sony is much better engineeringwise and the dial of D-NE1 seems much cooler and the battery life and skip protection will be much better with a Sony. However future upgradability chances are better in an I-River though they never included an additional format so far. One thing I can't understand is even though DVD player is not costly to include except for Sony MPD-AP20U, no portable player has it.
And MPD-AP20U has a CD writer feature which is unneccesary for me and I wouldn't want to carry that extra circuitry.  Don't you think an optical player is too bulky for 700MB offer? Even though DVD writers are becoming popular I can't understand why none still has DVD+RW support. Maybe the competition will bring them soon and even the BluRay ones are soon ahead.

I guess I am giving up on AAC/MP4/Ogg/MPC expectations on a portable for a little while.  I believe the future is in the optical media because of its cost advantage. I hope 80GB 8cm media comes soon and solves our problems...
The object of mankind lies in its highest individuals.
One must have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #12 –
Quote
Hmm, maybe an ATRAC decoder is easier and costs less to make (as encoding is faster) and that could explain why Sony is this much into ATRAC.

How would you compare the stereo separation in MP3 128 vs. ATRAC LP2?

Don't forget that ATRAC3 & ATRAC3+ encodings are embedded in an DRM contenair (or maybe extension) ; these fileformats are of the major piece in Sony copyright protection chess, as WMA, in a more strict way (yYou can't encode anything without the DRM protection). I think that you don't need to look further if you want to know why Suny is so found of ATRAC.


I haven't any problem with LAME ABR stereo separation, and I didn't notice anything wrong with LP2 (LP4 is very different, here).
Wavpack Hybrid -c4hx6

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #13 –
Hmm, but Sony got rid of its OpenMG thing. Doesn't that mean the end of DRM in Sony? Can't I transfer my ATRAC files encoded in SoundStage to a different computer? I think I can even transfer them back from one of the new players...
The object of mankind lies in its highest individuals.
One must have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #14 –
Quote
Hmm, but Sony got rid of its OpenMG thing. Doesn't that mean the end of DRM in Sony? Can't I transfer my ATRAC files encoded in SoundStage to a different computer? I think I can even transfer them back from one of the new players...

There is a backup tool in SonicStage/OpenMG, that saves digital key with the *.omg files. Without these keys, transfert is not possible.
Wavpack Hybrid -c4hx6

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #15 –
Quote
There is a backup tool in SonicStage/OpenMG, that saves digital key with the *.omg files. Without these keys, transfert is not possible.

...and even then, the backup doesn't work well. When I used a NetMD device, I had 10GB of backup burned on packet-written CD-R's using OpenMG's backup program. Upon trying to restore them, something went wrong and I only could restore disc 1 of the set  Apparently, the backup tool goofed up when writing the directory on the first CD, making the others useless and unreadable. I wouldn't count on Sony ever letting up on it's DRM policies; after all, it does own a large chunk of the record market and thus is more concerned with protecting its assets than making concessions for its customers.

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #16 –
Quote
There is a backup tool in SonicStage/OpenMG, that saves digital key with the *.omg files. Without these keys, transfert is not possible.

Are you sure this is the case with the new players too? Open MG does not come with them anymore. Is this key in the same ATRAC file when you backup or written in separate files?

and also could someone tell me what you do for keeping the tags. I will transcode my MPC archive, is there a way to convert them to WAV and use SonicStage (w/o another transcode into MP3) to keep the tags?
The object of mankind lies in its highest individuals.
One must have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #17 –
Quote
Quote
There is a backup tool in SonicStage/OpenMG, that saves digital key with the *.omg files. Without these keys, transfert is not possible.

Are you sure this is the case with the new players too? Open MG does not come with them anymore. Is this key in the same ATRAC file when you backup or written in separate files?

I thought that SonicStage supplanted OpenMG.
I can't relly answer you. I haven't any MD at home : I was interested by ATRAC quality, not by DRM design 
Wavpack Hybrid -c4hx6

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #18 –
It's really interesting why there's so much ATRAC mania? Even in knowledgeable forums like Head-Fi. I did a search comparing ATRAC to MP3 and many claims ATRAC LP2 beats MP3 hands down 
The object of mankind lies in its highest individuals.
One must have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #19 –
Quote
It's really interesting why there're so many ATRAC mania? Even in knowledgeable forums like Head-Fi. I did a search comparing ATRAC to MP3 and many claims ATRAC LP2 beats MP3 hands down 

Because people loves their minidisc player, loves the minidisc format, and are often afraid by mp3 expansion. Their judgment is biased by affection.
And a lot of people are opposing to ATRAC crap encodings (downloaded on P2P networks : when there are not reecoded, the original codec is Blade, Plugger or Xing).
Last thing : MD users are often very young...
Wavpack Hybrid -c4hx6

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #20 –
Quote
Last thing : MD users are often very young...

That means they can hear higher frequencies better and would ABX the lowpass filter immediately  Do you mean the youngsters can't hear  I am 24, should that affect my choice when I do the format pick
The object of mankind lies in its highest individuals.
One must have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #21 –
You're too old for MD quality, then ;-)
Wavpack Hybrid -c4hx6

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #22 –
Regarding MD fanaticism, it's really amazing that so many people won't give up on MD, even after Sony's DRM debacle and the fact that much better and less expensive options exist if you aren't interested in field recordings (a main reason why I used to own a MD recorder). Some of the newest recorders, like the MZ-N10, are more than $300! I would rather have an ipod at that price than deal with space-limited media, inferior compression, and DRM.

One last thought on ATRAC3plus, from a technical standpoint: after downloading SonicStage and testing ATRAC3plus, I thought that the artifacts in certain pieces sounded familiar! If anybody has ever used a FhG encoder at low bitrates, you will know how badly-implemented intensity stereo sounds....instruments often have "lisps" in the opposite channel and other wierd noises occur when the seperation widens in a piece. I almost wonder if Sony is using some sort of IS in ATRAC3plus, because the codec itself doesn't sound much better than plain ATRAC3. By using IS, they could raise the lowpass filter by 1-2Khz, or lower the bitrate, which they have done by offering 48kbps and 64kbps as bitrate choices. This of course would make it incompatible with ATRAC3 decoders, which is why MD and some MS walkmans can't decode it (plus, the frame sizes are a different multiple than regular ATRAC3). I hope that nobody confuses this ATRAC3plus with AAC+ or ctAACplus (AAC+SBR). Perhaps Sony purposely named it this way to compete with upcoming SBR technologies, or at least benefit from their similar names? 

(Edit: bad spelling    )

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #23 –
Quote
Some of the newest recorders, like the MZ-N10, are more than $300! I would rather have an ipod at that price than deal with space-limited media, inferior compression, and DRM.

iPod? I'd never go for anything Apple. I don't think anything they produce is good. Minidisc has advantages like very small + recording capability + excellent Sony construction/engineering + awesome dial + If you have a minidisc combo it might be a better deal.
Being lightweight is really important sometimes. For instance when you jog, do workout at the gym, etc...
The object of mankind lies in its highest individuals.
One must have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

ATRAC3plus quality

Reply #24 –
Quote
Quote
Last thing : MD users are often very young...

That means they can hear higher frequencies better and would ABX the lowpass filter immediately  Do you mean the youngsters can't hear  I am 24, should that affect my choice when I do the format pick 

I don't think he meant 24 as being young, more like pre-teens and early teens, lol but I see your sarcasm.  :sarcasm->I mean, look at MiniDisc players, I mean, like, they are SO cool looking!!!  Guess I'll HAVE to use ATRAC!!!  Who cares when this thing is so tiny!!! <-sarcasm:  .  Most of the guys I have talked to have that attitude and don't even care about the sound of the MD player, but simply the functionality (which I could argue is nothing special anyway) and there is no talking to them, they will sit there and deny that there could possibly be something better.
WARNING:  Changing of advanced parameters might degrade sound quality.  Modify them only if you are expirienced in audio compression!