Y'all probably know the site below, it has some info on ATRAC. I think in one
FAQ part there is a link to a site where an experiment was done in which 1 to
several hundred ATRAC'd 'copies of copies' of sound material were made, and
apparently you could notice a difference in sound quality after a hundred or so
copies (?). Aid I think the latest version (ATRAC-5?) is 'indistinguishable'
from bit-exact recording.
ATRAC is not like MIDI, because ATRAC does not recreate the original
(bit-exact) recording on playback.
ATRAC compresses by removing frequency information which is considered
'un-necessary' in terms of psychoacoustics... like in mp3 (whose loss is more
notiveable because it compresses to about 1:10 vs. 1:5 for ATRAC, I think).
Anyway, the 'un-necessary' part bothers me somehow... it's subjective, and it's
kind of telling you what you don't need. Perhaps that makes any pro-con
argument meaningless... me, I bought a (used) DAT deck. Maybe it stasifies my
neurosis to know that what I'm hearing is distorted only by the analog
electronics of my setup (the DAT deck also does double duty as a 2-channel
audio to SPDIF converter in my studio). And yes, ATRAC will affect sound
analysis. But I may yet buy an MD for its sheer convenience.
Did my first nature recording this wknd... frogs and brids (and airplanes, and
motorbikes, and dogs, and...) in my backyard. Gotta get a windscreen.
http://www.minidisc.org./faq_index.html
regards,
Vlad
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