We've never claimed that the CMU team are the most knowledgeable people in music (though presumably we're pretty close), but surely the CMU readership is. Anyway, several of you pointed out a mistake in our story on the launch, by Sony, of a Walkman that will play MP3s.
We said that to play MP3s on an iPod, Apple's iTunes software converted the MP3 track into an AAC format. Actually that is not true - the iPod plays the MP3s as is. In fact that conversion process was what previously happened if you wanted to play MP3s on a digital Walkman (ie Sony's software converted MP3s in their own ATRAC format) - the new walkman launched this week will play MP3s without any file conversion.
This is an important change because, as Tom Dunmore, Editor of Rip&Burn magazine explains (and he should know): "Converting files between one compression format and another seriously affects sound quality - like taping a tape. iPods play MP3 and AAC natively. Sony's player used to use software to convert MP3s to ATRAC - the HD3 [that's the new model of walkman] is the first one that doesn't require this conversion. This is a good thing".
That said, perhaps it isn't as important a change now as it might once have been. A new report on the BBC website reckons that perfect sound quality - once the holy grail for hi fi aficionados - is no longer so important in the digital player age where consumers are more concerned as to how much of their vast (and often largely illegally obtained) MP3 collections they can fit on their portably player.So much so they would rather take tracks in a compressed lower quality format than opt for best possibly sound.
The BBC's Paul Rubens writes: "The great irony for the entertainment electronics industry is that now that very high quality sound and video reproduction is possible and quite affordable thanks to CDs and DVDs, many consumers no longer see quality as a very high priority. They are happy to "downgrade" to MP3 and [in the case of video] DivX quality to accommodate the deluge of digital content that is getting increasingly easy to accumulate. The manufacturers of digital music players - Apple, Creative, iRiver and others - have been quick to grasp this. The main difference between a cheap and an expensive MP3 player is simply the amount of storage space it has."
You can read Rubens'article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4052123.stm