The Flash Memory Option

Flash memory offers some outstanding benefits. At the time of writing, flash memory goes up to 4GB, which allows about one thousand mp3 songs. When you consider the average radio station's active play list is less than two hundred songs at any given time, and shrinking, a 1,000-song capacity is quite substantial. In current recording terms, that could be as many as 60 to 100 albums. Moreover, flash memory has no moving parts and so can withstand slightly rougher treatment. And players can be considerably smaller and therefore more portable. Additional benefits come in the form of small, yet quite powerful storage media and astounding battery life.

The CD Media Option

Following on from the Sony Walkman phenomenon, portable CD players have been around for some years. Now however, portable CD players can play mp3 and other compressed audio formats as well as standard CDs. Using this technology, you can download your music to your computer and burn it onto a CD in mp3 format, and play it in your portable player. You don't need to concern yourself with storage capacity. A single CD will hold 700 MB of music, or around 175 songs. These players are limited in their other functions, but are often cheap to buy. However because they use CD technology (and therefore have moving parts), they are susceptible to shock and it can be quite inconvenient to carry a whole bunch of CDs around if you need a large library of music on your jogging circuit.

Controlling what you hear

Okay, so we've sorted out how you want to consume your music and now you have some leaning as to which type of player is going to suit you based on its media system and storage capacity. But there is still more for you to consider. There are two aspects to being able to control your audio through your mp3 player. One is its connectivity. In the first instance, you need to be able to download the music you want to hear in the format that's going to suit your player, and vice versa. So first you need to make sure you choose a player that is compatible with the source. (Frankly, you can't go far wrong with iTunes and most players, but there are many other options, including Virgin, Napster, Sony, all of which offer different media options.) Second, you need to have a simple connection between the computer you download your program onto and your portable mp3 player. Most players these days use USB serial interfaces. But there are also fire wire and wireless options. You also may want to consider whether you want to receive FM radio on your mp3 player, and whether you want to use your mp3 player to record program (much like a cassette player). These features are available on some players, but not on all. Furthermore, the recording options may be limited. A player that can record only wave files will limit your recording capacity. (One minute of stereo wave file is about 10 megabytes, compare with one megabyte in mp3 format.) There has long been the promise of music kiosks where you can simply charge a flash memory stick with new songs. Perhaps we will see this in the coming year.

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