I recently found myself working in New York City with a 5-hour daily commute (door to door). This has caused me to search for ways to make the commute more enjoyable: books, magazines, chatting with fellow commuters, talking on a cell phone, or just thinking. I knew I needed music, but how? I already carry a somewhat heavy Powerbook computer, paperback book, magazine, and papers for work, and the last thing I needed was a heavy CD player and a 20-pack of CDs. I wanted something small, compact, with great sound, but not a portable radio. I am the type of person who will listen to 10 or 15 songs for hours and be perfectly happy. I finally realized it was time, once again, to try an exciting new technology to solve a problem. This always worries me, because I spend hours on buggy software and doing things that would be solved in a later release of the software. This time I was pleasantly surprised. I decided to purchase an MP3 player to help ease my weary commute. MP3 is the name of a format used to compress and store music. A CD typically holds only 20 songs, but has tremendous capacity: 640 mb. There is very little compression of the music in a typical CD. However, using MP3, you can fit as many as 170 songs on one CD-R (which costs about 50 cents). The problem is that with most types of compression there is a loss of quality. With MP3, you have some control over the compression and resulting quality. If you are a typical user (like me) youll probably notice it only on highly compressed files. Youre probably wondering how to take your CD collection and turn it into MP3 files. There are many programs which take your CD and turn it into an MP3 file, known as encoders. Most MP3 players come with encoder software, but you can also find a huge selection (for Mac or Windows) at www.mp3.com. A typical song goes from around 32 mb to 3 mb (about 10 - 1 compression). This means that you can fit about 10 songs on a 32 mb player, or 20 on 64 MB. You can also get MP3 files on the Internet. However, since Ive been making my living for the past 15 years on copyrighted material (software, computer graphics and writing), I must advise you to pay for what you enjoy. So, make sure you only download music you own - or buy the CDs for music you like. Napster, a popular file-sharing program enables you search other peoples collections to find music. You can also find special MP3 files on fan sites or even free from the artists. I think the greatest MP3 files are from rare collections or unpublished live versions, things you cant buy. I started looking at MP3 players, and found many places that sold them. They range in price from around $89 to $699. The large price range is due to the type of storage used. Most MP3 players use memory cards, which are expensive - around $170 for a 64MB player. There are some CD players that have the ability to play MP3 files on CD-R, and they start in price from $89. You could fit 500 songs on 3 or 4 CD-Rs and carry a huge selection of music with you. The most expensive ones use a hard disk, and can hold up to thousands of songs. Some of the new PDAs are starting to support MP3 playback, but its been an expensive option. I had another criteria for selecting
an MP3 player. I love to read, but Im starting to loathe
the $8 cost per book (I read several per week). Ive never
been into audio books or books on tape, but since I have so much
time on my hands, I figured it was time to hear the author or
famous actor read to me. They claim you can fit 32 hours of the spoken word on the player, or a mix and match of MP3 files and books. I had some trouble when I downloaded Stephen Kings "On Writing" book" it deleted the music on the player. So, I just have to download the music again. I think the Audible software needs some work, but otherwise its an amazing bit of technology. The super-compressed version of the book by Stephen King sounds a bit metallic, but its neat to hear him read the book to you. Things you need to look for in MP3
players include size, memory, expandability, included software,
headphones, software and firmware upgrades, and battery life.
Make sure you dont get a serial interface--itll take
forever compared to a USB interface to transfer your music. |
Mike is a DACS member who loves being on the bleeding edge but hates the sight of blood. You can contact him by e-mail: mikek@demorgan.com. |