We are pleased to release this special full ATRAC Plugin to our beloved userbase. You will now be able to write, and read, all ATRAC files within Sony Media Software. From the words of Dan Kinney, Senior Director of Technology at Sony:
We have built a plug-in for the application from our “Media Software” group. These are apps such as Sound Forge and ACID, which are pretty common in the audio editing community. Support for ATRAC will be included in the next version of ACID (version 6) which is about to ship. Other apps will soon get the functionality as part of an auto-update.
These apps support the new “.aa3” file format definition for ATRAC. This is the definition of audio files using the ATRAC codec without any copy protection or DRM.
Essentially, this is an MP3 file, only using ATRAC for the codec. While it uses ID3v2 tags for its metadata, it also supports an audio header at the beginning of the audio data to describe the bitstream to the playback app or device. This little tweak makes it different enough to make it problematic to use a standard ID3 editor, but trust me…they are ID3 tags. Sonicstage (3.3 and beyond) can support *.aa3. As of the last firmware update (2.5), the PSP is capable of playing back these files.
This plugin has been tested with Sound Forge 8 and Vegas 6 (video editing app). It supports ATRAC3, ATRAC3plus and Advanced Lossless.
Download the ATRAC Plugin here! You must be a registered member of ATRACLife to download. (free, takes under a minute)
Tip: After creating a *.aa3 file, rename the extension of said file to *.omg to allow Sonicstage to put it on your ATRAC-capable device.
Nonetheless, this is compatible with ALL Sony Media apps (Vegas, Vegas+DVD, DVD Architect, Vegas Movie Studio, Vegas Movie Studio+DVD, DVD Architect Studio, ACID, Music Studio, ACIDized, Super Duper Music Looper, Jam Trax, Sony Sound Series, Chopper, Groove Mapping, Groove Cloning, CD Architect, Sound Forge, Audio Studio, Acoustic Mirror, Noise Reduction, Wave 64, Wave Hammer, XFX and more.). Read further for an example of the functionality present with Vegas 5:
