From: Stainless Steel Rat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: MD-L <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, March 05, 2000 6:13 AM
Subject: Re: MD: Sony's new Internet Audio Recording Interface
>
> * "Magic" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on Sat, 04 Mar 2000
> | The most obvious solution to this would be to put the ATRAC encoding on
the
> | computer end. This means that only 1/5th of the data would need to be
sent
> | down the USB interface.
>
> It also means that you would not be able to use this with any existing MD
> hardware, which makes it useless for the entirety of current MD owners in
> the world.
No, you'd simply have the option to send either "ATRAC Encoded" or "SPDIF"
down the line. This would make it compatible with external CD-Rs etc too.
> Besides, ATRAC encoding in software is *SLOW* (every MD recorder in the
> world has a specialized, dedicated ASIC for this purpose). Current
desktop
> PC hardware is not powerful enough to encode ATRAC 4 in real time using a
> software encoder. So any savings you might get for compressing the data
> before transmitting will be lost in the compression process.
You expect me to believe that a P200 can emulate an entire playstation
system with software emulation but not handle something as simple as ATRAC?
My P3-450 has no trouble encoding 10 minutes of audio into a 320kbps MP3 in
about 20 seconds, so I think it would handle ATRAC in the background without
any problem at all. You could get near-perfect recordings too. If the
requirement for real-time was removed and the audio was pre-encoded before
being sent to the MD, the ATRAC version would become almost irrelevant -
just like commercially released MDs, the abolute maximum quality could be
obtained from the available data bandwidth.
> If Sony were starting from scratch, this might make sense. Given that MD
> is an established market, it makes no sense at all.
On the contrary, adding improvements and extra features to make it fit into
the requirements of it's users could only strengthen its position in the
marketplace. It would be far more detremental to *not* advance the
technology and get left behind. It would become like the vinyl LP, with only
some hard-core fans still using it.
Magic
--
"Creativity is more a birthright than an acquisition, and the power of sound
is wisdom and understanding applied to the power of vibration."
Location : Portsmouth, England, UK
Homepage : http://www.mattnet.freeserve.co.uk
EMail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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