Hi,

That is indeed so. Though it still raises the question "why", which bears on the next point

I asked myself to consider doing such a comparison, as it would be needed to determine if we have an inherent issue with Atrac3 or one with the Device used. The test I proposed more or less to myself would do so, however it would be very limited relevance to myself and indeed to others.

Perhaps the upshot is that if one considers such a device one should take along a Data-CD or memory stick with a few tracks one finds especially revealing and/or representative of the music the device would be used with, pre-encoded using a variety of methodes so the formats can be compared and to ask the retailer to transfer these files without transcoding and to have a listen to these.

In that case for example if one device was worse with trac3 than with MP3 but another had no difference one would be able to tell and decide accordingly. With only 512MB for music my wife's phone/walkman could use to sound good with 64k Atrac3, even my pocket PC (which can be given software to play it) would appreciate a good sounding low bitrate format, sadly  so far that free lunch has escaped me (I usually get quite a few free lunches a year at industry events)...

Ciao T