ATRAC3plus

ATRAC stands for Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding and ATRAC3 is an evolution of the earlier ATRAC1 system used with Sony's SDDS theater audio system and the MiniDisc format. ATRAC3plus is an extension of the ATRAC3 format. The codec is used with Sony HiMD Walkman device , PlayStation 3 (PS3), PlayStation Portable (PSP), VAIO pocket and ATRAC CD players. It used four times the transform window of ATRAC3, stretching to 4096 samples with a signal split into 16 sub-bands pre bit allocation and MDCT processes.

Originally, data rates of 48kb/s, 64kb/s and 256kb/s were available but recently updates to the Sonic Stage software offered more available bitrates; 48kb/s, 64kb/s, 96kb/s, 128kb/s, 160kb/s, 192kb/s, 256kb/s, 320kb/s and 352kb/s, although using the newer rates is not recommended with older hardware, especially MiniDisc. A Sony-funded study found that ATRAC3plus at 64kb/s matched or surpassed the quality of AAC at 96kb/s or MP3 at 128kb/s. Independent tests may come to completely different results however, and so these figures should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Please also view our Glossary entries for..

• ATRAC1
• ATRAC3
• ATRAC
• ATRAC Advanced Lossless
• MiniDisc
• CDA
• Lossy Compression
• Lossless Compression
• Codec
• Walkman
• SDDS

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