Consider Your Decision Carefully - Hopefully This Will Help
Feb 12 '00
So, you’re considering hopping on the techie-gadget bandwagon and purchasing a portable MP3 player aren’t you? Well, if you’ve got $250.00 burning a hole in your pocket and you really want to experiment with one of these, then go for it! But, if you’re like the rest of us, take heed in my warnings that one of these toys may not be right for you. I will try to say as non-technical as possible in this article, but I apologize in advance for any jargon that I may use.
Brief MP3 Background
An mp3 is an audio data file that computers can read from and playback. It is essentially a CD-quality audio file that has been highly compressed through complicated encoding techniques. These files can only be read by software (codecs) capable of decoding the data file back into sound for output through a sound card and your speakers and/or headphones. Currently, this can be accomplished on computers using a wide variety of programs, or with built-in programs on the portable players. An mp3 file, at nominal CD quality, is slightly larger than 1MB per minute.
MP3 files can be illegally acquired quite easily on the Internet. However, it is perfectly legal to make them yourself, from CD’s that you legally own. This, however is a complicated sub-topic that I will cover in a later Epinion.
Portable MP3 Player Info (Brief)
A couple of years ago the first one of these gadgets immersed. It boasted 32MB of flashable memory (so you can add and delete songs). You are able to add/delete the songs though a serial or USB cable attached to your computer. This was, and still is, the only way to program the flash memory on these players.
The foremost prominent feature of the portable mp3 players is that the songs will NOT skip during playback. This is because there are no moving parts within the player, so sudden jarring (like jogging) will not cause problems.
Of course, cassette players will not skip either, but those are bulkier and have far inferior audio output. Most cassette players, even with noise reduction, will emit a low “hissing” noise along with the music.
Enough Of The Background: Finally, My Epinion On Portable MP3 Players
The companies that sell these products greatly mislead the consumer with their advertising, and only tell the truth in the fine print. At present these players, by definition, can not hold many files at once. (Later this year a new generation of players will be released, and this information will be inaccurate.)
They state a certain amount of music (length) that these portable players can hold at one time. That time they give you is based on, I believe, 24kilo-bits/second sampling rate. Now this quality is by NO MEANS CD-quality. A CD-Quality mp3 is at least 128kb/s, and many people claim that only 160 or 192kb/sec are CD-quality. So, when the box says that the player will hold you must read the fine print. Typically an mp3 file is 4MB large. So, a standard 32-mb player can hold only EIGHT CD-quality songs. Is the ability to listen to 30 minutes or less of CD-quality music worth your money? It certainly isn’t worth mine.
You can purchase spare “flash cards” in 32-mb increments for most of these players. However, these cards are expensive and difficult to locate and purchase. This is a very common complaint form owners of mp3 players.
My Solution To This Problem
Being the experienced computer junkie that I am, I decided to be as monetarily efficient as possible with my music listening experience. Last year instead of spending money on an MP3 player, I instead purchased a CDR/RW drive, CD-Creator software, a 50-pack of CDR Discs, and a new portable CD-Player with 40 seconds of anti-skip protection. The total cost of this purchase about $350.00. Each CDR disc can hold 72 minutes of CD-Quality audio, for a total of 3,600 minutes or 60 hours of potential recording time.
Using technology to my advantage, I routinely “burn” new audio-CDs with a mix of songs (usually 12-14 songs). Now this is certainly more complicated than using the MP3-player I could have purchased, but I find it much more useful. I also use the CD-Burner to back up files from my computer and share files with friends. I find that my decision to use recordable CDs instead of a Portable mp3-player was a wise choice, and I have never been disappointed with my decision.
Closing Thoughts
For some of you, the portable may be the right choice. If you jog and exercise frequently a CD-player may be too bulky, and the anti-skip does not always work as well as it should. If you don’t want to take the time to learn how to convert mp3 files into an audio CD (somewhat complicated), then you may not want to use my advice. I plan to write an article describing this process as well at a later time.
Whichever decision you choose to make, I wish you luck with your experience. Be sure to read Epinions about the exact products you consider purchasing beforehand. This site is a very valuable resource, and there are many CD-Burners, CD-Players, and MP3-Players that have gotten poor reviews in this forum, so you wouldn’t want to buy one of those.
I have shared the “wisdom” contained in this Epinion with countless friends and associates over the past couple of years. Now, I am happy to say I can stop ‘talking’ about it, because it is now written in binary “stone” here in the Epinions.com database <grin>.
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Epinions.com ID:
shauncool
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Member: Shaun Smith
Location: USA
Reviews written: 121
Trusted by: 236 members
About Me:
Website Applications Developer concentrating on Database Design & Integration into websites based on ASP Technology.
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