Hardware vs. Software - never the twain shall meet?

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From: Geldhorn (Geldhorn_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 01/21/05 

Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 12:23:01 -0800

The world of personal solid-state and hard-drive based "MP3" personal audio
players must currently be one of the most rapidly expanding and hotly
contested electronics market segments in the world at present with everyone
in the developed and developing world ditching their crusty CD walkmans and
minidisc players for the latest 'music library in you pocket' device.

However, the consumer faces a double dilemma - the choice of technology and
design vs. format. Once upon a time there was a very good compression
technology known as MPEG Layer 3, aka MP3 which did a very good job of
compressing large 44.1kHz 16bit audio files into a (comparatively) tiny
space. This was fine until the world and his wife jumped on the bandwagon and
now we have probably close to ten mainstream audio compression formats in
competition with each other. The worst bit is that everyone pushes their own
proprietry CODEC and associated software along with their hardware. That's
all fine if the software is as good as the hardware or vice versa.

In the majority of cases, however, this is NOT the case. A lot of devices
that are compatible with WMA format are shocking pieces of electronic
hardware. Conversely, a lot of the finest electronics come with the worst
software imaginable. In my case - Sony - the audio player is, in keeping with
Sony's history, one of the best designed, robust, reliable, fantastically
performing, beautifully styled bits of kit you could ever wish for. The
ATRAC3 CODEC in itself is also pretty damned good (gives WMA9 a rund for its
money). However, the 'Sonic Stage' software that is required to transfer
files from your PC to the device is ABSOLUTELY F***KING S**T!!

What makes it even worse is that I have my entire back catalogue of hundreds
of CDs stored in WMA lossless format on my PC taking up about 400Gb and every
one has to be transferred into Sony's painful software before I can upload it
to my audio player..

The point I am (slowly) coming to is that until the day a compression
"standard" is agreed... (could you imagine fifteen different formats of DVD
or CD in your music store)... the hardware and software giants: Sony, Apple,
Microsoft etc. should try a bit more collaboration - it can only ultimately
result in more sales, not less and what the likes of Sony fail to realise is
that by limiting me to their format I simply won't buy a Sony player next
time round!

In the meantime, (Microsoft - if you're listening, please take note) can we
please have an audio player that can convert and export all these file types.
I love WMP10 and use it as my only software for archiving and listening to
music on my PC and would dearly love to be able to export tunes directly from
it to my ATRAC3 device. If it is a question of licensing the relevant CODECs
I would willingly pay a reasonable amount for the benefit of being able to
store all my music in one format rather than two or three!!!

MS, pleeeeaaaase, make this happen!

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