Comments on: Crankcast Episode 48 - 090606

By: Drew M

Drew M — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 22:44:34 +0000

you have to be pretty drunk to mention atrac anyway.

By: crank!

crank! — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 19:55:11 +0000

Right but I was trying to make the point that they’d initially hampered themselves by sticking with a proprietary, heavily DRM’d product.

I think … I mean I was pretty drunk at the time … usually if I’m talking about ATRAC it’s a pretty safe bet that’s the point I was trying to make though.

Or something.

We need better show notes for this week.

crank!

By: Taber

Taber — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 15:25:04 +0000

That’s a good article Crank, but it’s dated January 2005. Since then Sony’s music players play mp3’s and ATRAC. I remember seeing on our employee website that there was a patch you could install on their pre-2005 players that would allow it to play .mp3’s. But all of their music players since then play both, not just ATRAC.

By: Drew M

Drew M — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 02:33:24 +0000

mmm…ice cream…mmm

By: groble

groble — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 00:21:02 +0000

who doesn’t like ice cream. the real question though is what flavour? inquiring minds need to know

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 22:24:21 +0000

I have an ipod.

and I like ice cream

By: groble

groble — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 21:50:05 +0000

wow song are just in the pits aren’t they.

lets hope the PS3 can save….. oh wait they just lost the european market.

well at least they have bluray dvd playerrrrssss………. oh what’s that? all the lasers are being put into the over priced PS3.

well they’ll always have…….. walkman’s =D

By: crank!

crank! — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 21:46:15 +0000

I think this article gives my standpoint on Sony and ATRAC a bit of a shoulder to lean on :
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20050120/1243205.shtml

crank!

By: Taber

Taber — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 20:54:26 +0000

Well if it’s any consolation Sonic Stage deleted all 3000 .mp3’s I had on my computer. i just wanted to clear the library on Sonic Stage and manually add the .mp3’s I wanted and instead it deleted all of my songs. All of them!!!!! it didn’t even put them in the Recycle Bin. I will never forgive them for that.

By: Sean McKeever

Sean McKeever — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 20:45:55 +0000

It’s the NW-HD5. Here’s my Amazon review:

I bought the HD5 a few months back to replace my enormous and dying Archos player. I picked it over the iPod because of reviews about the functionality, menus, long-lasting (and removable!) battery, and sound quality. Let me tell you, in this regard, this is a wonderful piece of machinery. The sound quality is amazing and I love the deck-of-cards size of the thing.

Now, let me backtrack a bit. A couple years back, I started this massive project of ripping the songs I enjoy from my CD collection (300+) so I could have them on my PC and mp3 player. It took me two years off and on to complete. I was really concerned about losing my mp3 files, but I figured that as long as I had them on my mp3 player, I had a backup copy and was safe.

Sadly, about a month ago, my hard drive crashed. I got a new drive, reloaded WinXP and all of that oh-so-fun stuff. Then I reloaded SonicStage and tried to move my music files back onto my PC. No luck. These ATRAC files can only be reverted to mp3 on the computer they were converted from, and since I had a new hard drive, I was out of luck. Sure, I can actually copy the ATRAC files from the walkman to my PC, but they’re in a format that can only be played by the same copy of SonicStage that spawned them, plus there is no decent software available to convert these back to mp3 format.

I contacted Sony customer service, politely explaining my situation, and their response was essentially “tough luck, pal.” So, as things stand, Sony has essentially taken my 15+ gigs of music hostage. I understand the need to protect the music industry from rampant bootlegging, but this is as far away from “customer friendly” as it gets, folks.

The moral of this story: backup your mp3s on DVD-R before you import them into SonicStage if you want to keep what’s yours.

By: Sean McKeever

Sean McKeever — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 20:38:53 +0000

I have the NW5, I think it’s called. It does not play MP3s, only ATRACs. And the only way to turn an ATRAC into an MP3 is by using Sony’s software. And Sony’s software will only convert ATRACs into MP3s is if it recognizes the track as being originally converted from the same PC. I can move the ATRAC files to my computer physically, but I can’t play them. I went back and forth with Sony CS and they essentially said, “you’re SOL, happy holidays!”

By: Taber

Taber — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 19:56:11 +0000

I don’t know what you’re talking about Sean, I have this model:

http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start?ProductSKU=NWE505PINK

(But not in Pink) And it plays mp3’s and ATRAC3’s that you download from the Sony Connect site. But as we all know you can burn iTunes or ATRAC formats to a disc and then rip them from the disc back to your computer in .mp3 format. So either way, there are ways around these formats.

By: crank!

crank! — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 05:15:36 +0000

I think the point I was trying to make in my absolutely smashed way was … oooh a butterfly … I’ll be back.

crank!

By: Drew M

Drew M — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 00:35:31 +0000

Together now, Proprietary Formats blow!

By: groble

groble — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 22:03:19 +0000

but itunes does a similiar things. it’s music files can only be put onto an ipod, no other MP3 player

By: Sean McKeever

Sean McKeever — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 21:43:35 +0000

I hate Sony’s OMA/Atrac–which they still use. You CAN’T play MP3s on their products. I own their network walkman, which is itself great, but now that my hard drive’s crashed, it’s basically holding all my music files hostage. I can’t convert my files back to MP3 and I can’t play the OMAs anywhere but on the Sony player, all because the player no longer recognizes my computer. RRRR!

By: groble

groble — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 13:16:39 +0000

what the fuck? take a week off? are you guys taking the piss? you can’t take a week off. 52 weeks in a year. a YEAR.

CRANK IS RIGHT.

Madness

By: groble

groble — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 11:56:26 +0000

oh my god i saw that picture and i semi yelled out in a hushed yell type of yell “tabers back!” and i moused over the picture and it said “tabers back!” i was totally like woah.

pringles rock