Sony NW-MS90D - Manual (Page 58)

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ATRAC3
ATRAC3, which stands for Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding3, is audio compression technology that
satisfies the demand for high sound quality and high compression rates.
The ATRAC3 compression rate is approximately 10 times higher than that of the Audio CD, resulting in an
increased data capacity for the media.
ATRAC3plus
ATRAC3plus, which stands for Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding3plus, is audio compression
technology that compresses data higher than ATRAC3. The ATRAC3plus is new audio compression
technology that enables equal or higher quality sound comparing to ATRAC3.
Bit rate
Indicates the data amount per second. The rate is reflected in bps (bit per second).
64 kbps means 64,000 bits of information per second. If the bit rate is large, that means a large amount of
information is used to play music. Comparing music of the same format (e.g., ATRAC3plus), 64 kbps data
offers better sound quality than 48 kbps data. However, audio files in formats such as MP3 have different
encoding methods, and thus sound quality cannot be determined by simply comparing the bit rate.
Glossary (continued)