BRITISH RECORDING INDUSTRY GROUP ASSAILS SONY ATRAC3 SYSTEM

Sony’s system, shipping in April, uses improved version of ATRAC compression system it originally developed for MiniDisc. In recent Berlin briefing for reporters, Sony touted new ATRAC3plus system, adapted for use with CD, as offering higher quality and capacity than MP3 and Windows Media Audio, although some at Berlin session found demonstration inconclusive owing to listening material used. Sony said that by analyzing music in 52 separate frequency bands before converting it to digital, new ATRAC records CD quality sound onto blank CD at 48 kbps -- about 1/3 amount of data needed for MP3 and 1/30th of that for CD. Consequently, single blank CD can hold 30 hours of music or 490 tracks, company said. Line of 7 CD Walkman portables at $69-$199 will be bundled with Sonic Stage CD Simple Burner software that lets owner use PC to transcode CDs or MP3 files to ATRAC3plus at various compression ratios. Sony said that 48 kbps rate had sound quality equal to MP3 at 128 kbps, but that ATRAC 64 kbps rate yielded superior sound and was recommended for copying from CDs.

Andy Griffiths, Sony vp-personal audio for Europe, showed Berlin attendees how CD could be ripped to hard disc and from there to portable player at 64x normal speed. “As I'm talking I'm pumping 6 tracks onto the CD. It couldn’t be easier,” he said. We asked Mike Tsurumi, pres.-Sony Europe, how he reconciled company’s new ripping products with Sony Music’s policy of copy-protecting CDs to prevent ripping. He left it to Griffiths to answer: “The industry is in organic change. There are a lot of questions to be answered. We haven’t got any yet but are working very closely with Sony Music to find the right solution.” Tsurumi said Sony Pres. Nobuyuki Idei “wants more internal coordination and collaboration between the hardware and software divisions. It is very difficult to create group synergy. It’s taken 10 years to reach this stage.”

Tsurumi told reporters that “technologies like CD-R are already available. Consumers are used to using them freely.” Suggesting that record labels “need to change their business model,” Tsurumi said “MiniDisc sales would have been bigger if we had let consumers copy more freely.”

Sony Music has conceded it’s marketing copy-protected CDs in Asia and Europe, some using key2audio copy-protection system developed by Sony’s DADC replication subsidiary in Austria. Front line of defense against copying is that key2audio doesn’t permit CDs to play in PC drives. At Berlin meeting, Sony CD Product Manager Simon Mori insisted that “key2audio is compatible with Sony products” and that key2audio discs would play in Sony PC drive, enabling them to be transcoded to ATRAC3plus for use in new Discman products. Company executives pointed out that system permitted only one disc to be burned from original CD. ATRAC file on PC’s hard drive self-deletes after burning copy to disc. Mori admitted that Sony “found a security hole in the Simple Burner software that would let anyone with good PC knowledge make extra copies.” He said hole was being plugged in new versions of software. Unlike Philips, whose new DVD+R/RW burners enable PC user to copy 100 hours of MP3-compressed files to blank DVDs, ATRAC files can’t be burned on DVDs, Mori said.

Despite limitations on ATRAC copying, at least one music industry group expressed chagrin at new Sony and Philips systems. “It’s a no-brainer. Anything which lets people pirate more music like this has to be very bad news for the music industry,” said spokesman for BPI. International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and RIAA wouldn’t comment at all. RIAA spokesman told us Assn. didn’t comment on activities of individual members -- Sony in this case. IFPI told us it was banking on “the availability of legitimate online music services” to encourage people to buy music instead of copying it free from CDs or unauthorized Internet sites. Sony Music Europe had no comment on hardware group’s ATRAC players.

Much anticipated demonstration of ATRAC-transcoded CDs left more questions than it answered at Berlin briefing. Fenno de Boer, Sony Europe group mktg. mgr. for personal audio, handed out German and U.K. lab reports that showed MP3 performed “really badly” compared with ATRAC3plus at similar bit rates. But prepared test comparing original CD-quality recording with MP3 at 48 kbps and ATRAC3plus at 48 kbps wasn’t conclusive in supporting Sony’s prelaunch claims. Original music consisted of short sequence of noncopyrighted, synthesized rock with very limited dynamic range, similar to AM radio. MP3 version sounded very boxy and ATRAC version only less boxy.

When reporters asked for more telling comparison using classical music, clean vocals or jazz, Sony executives said none was available, there were no music CDs in building and Super Audio CDs being used for other demonstrations were single layer, DSD-only discs. SACD demonstrators later said that they had hybrid SACDs and ordinary CDs available if needed. Under pressure from audience Sony went out and bought jazz CD, John Coltrane’s Love Supreme, and ripped copies in Atrac3plus at 48- and 64 kbps. Lower bit-rate copy sounded very poor, with phasey underwater effect on saxophone and loss of all detail on cymbals. Copy made at 64 kbps sounded much better but quality still was very far below that of original CD.

In DVD recording area, Sony confirmed that dual-compatible RDR-GX7 recorder (CED Feb 25 p1) would use DVD+RW, DVD-RW and DVD-R discs, but not write-once DVD+R -- even though it used same drive as Sony’s DVD+R compatible PC burner. “There is no political intention. It took longer than expected. The standard for +R was too late,” said Hiro Shinohara, executive in charge of Sony’s home video product development. “It was set in January 2002,” he said of write-once standard, “and we could not do it. The hardware is compatible but the application software is different.” At U.S. briefing Feb. 24, Sony U.S. executives said same was true about previous generation of DVD players, which could play DVD-R/RW recordings but not DVD+R/RW. Firmware has been updated in latest Sony DVD players to handle DVD+R/RW recordings as well as formerly incompatible recordings made in DVD-R/RW’s “VR” (Video Recording) mode.

Upcoming DVD camcorders from Sony also will record in either DVD-R/RW standard -- compatible Video mode or editable but incompatible VR mode that offers up to 6 hours’ recording time (only serial editing is possible in Video mode). Shinohara said VR mode was needed to record broadcasts marked with “Copy Once” flag of Content Protection for Recordable Media standard, because only DVD-R/RW Version 1.1 blanks used in VR Mode and DVD-RAM blanks were CPRM-compatible. “At the moment it is not possible to record Copy Once material with DVD+RW,” he said. Complicated and hard-to-grasp demonstration of how recorder controls DVD camcorder to edit sequences onto disc failed on 3 out of 4 demo systems. When asked why Sony chose DVD-R/RW for its camcorder instead of DVD+R/RW system it had co-developed, Shinohara said: “We don’t have a religion on this. We are not sticking to one format. We are offering 2 worlds. Our engineers once tried to make a VCR that worked with both VHS and Beta tapes. What format is best? The best format is Sony.”