No, it wasn't your point. Your point was that you walked away from MP3 because it's too fiddly.

You said "It was a helluva lot of fiddling in the encoding process."

Not if you don't want it to be (as shown), so it's moot, so as a reason for not using MP3, it's nonsense.

Yes, I'm sure ATRAC3plus is fabulous. But it ties you to Windows, SonicStage and Sony players - and quite frankly the software's going to have to fellate me to make me put up with that sort of crap.

In the current climate, MP3 is the pragmatic choice. Plays anywhere. Quality decent. No patent encumbrance for the end-user (although codec vendors may feel differently).

Ogg Vorbis is the best-quality lossy codec, but you give away a certain amount of plays-anywhere for that. FLAC is the best option for lossless (and therefore quality).

You have an MD player and want to use it, and that's fine - I hope you enjoy it - but don't pretend that the alternatives are worse, because they're not.