Hi Arthur,
Arthur Kam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I'm planning to write a report about minidisc for a course, and wanted
> to write about ATRAC coding and decoding. I've read the Technology info
> on the MiniDisc Community Page, but noticed that it was pretty old
> (~1993-94). Don't exactly know how much the basic principles have
> changed, but I would like to find some more sites that talk about ATRAC
> and how it works. Most sites I've found on the web deal with products
> and not so much the tech side of it. Also ... does anyone know if there
> have been any published information about MD ... Thanks
The amount of published information on ATRAC is limited (see below),
but you can learn almost everything about it by studying any modern
perceptual coder (MPEG Audio Layers 1-3), Bell Labs PAC, Dolby AC3)
since they all operate in a surprisingly similar manner. I think
ATRAC's closest public counterpart is MPEG Layer I (which is the same
as PASC, the DCC's coding method).
Other sources of general MD technical information are:
1) Jan Maes book "The Minidisc" (can be ordered from amazon.com)
gives good general coverage of the MD system. It details the
MD's optics well, but in other respects does not really go
beyond the technical coverage already available on the MDCP.
2) A sub-section entitled "MiniDisc" in Chapter 10 of the book
"Magneto-Optical Recording Materials" (Gambino and Suzuki Ed.)
pp. 400-413. The section covers MD in general but goes into
detail on the recording layer. It includes good plots of the
Temp/Magnetic physics of MO recording on MD that I haven't
seen before.
3) Chapter 12 in John Watkinson's "The Art of Digital Audio"
entitled "Optical Discs in Audio" (pp. 557-640) which gives a
very detailed coverage of MO and CD systems (better than Maes'
book actually since it covers more than just MD *and* goes
into greater depth). This book also has a short section
(pp. 226-227) on the ATRAC coder, but gives good coverage of
audio coding and perceptual coding in general.
4) Section 43.5 of the tome "The Digital Signal Processing
Handbook" (Madisetti and Willams Ed.) entitlted "ATRAC and
ATRAC2" by Tsutsui, pp. 43-16 to 43-20 (quite thin
actually). I am fairly sure that ATRAC2 is a very close cousin
(if not the same as) what Sony now calls "ATRAC3". Unfortunately
there's not much new information in this beyond the ATRAC2
document http://www.minidisc.org/atrac2.html
You might be able to find books 2,3, and 4 at a good college
library. If I had to buy just one book it would be (3), it's a really
good book giving both broad and deep coverage of digital audio that is
written in a way that an intelligent layman can understand.
Of course the holy grail of all documents is the Sony Rainbow Book. No
one besides Sony MD License holders ($50,000 a pop thank you) gets to
see this.
Best of luck! And of course we'd love to have a copy of your report
for the MDCP (I've extended this invitation half a dozen times -- but
you can set precedent by being the first to take up the offer!).
Rick
-----------------------------------------------------------------
To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word
"unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
