Glad I never had anything to do with Sonicstage.
I remember Atrac3 - no bad codec. But hats off to the brilliant marketing decision by Sony to
add DRM at a time when mp3 was already the de-facto standard for portable devices...
Regarding QuackTime: there is a no frills alternative: QTalternative. Sadly they don't have the newest qt-codecs included, but it might be worth a try.