I own neither one. I never have.
But I want to know the difference.
Which is better?
Cheaper?
Has more songs & etc for it?
Any & all info appreciated.
An iPod is an MP3 player, but not all MP3 players are iPods. Just like a square is a rectangle but not all rectangles are squares.
There are many different brands that make MP3 players, and many models within those brands. Each model has its own features.
For the most part an MP3 player is a small hard drive on which you can place MP3 files, navigate through the files, and play the files over headphones or speakers.
Whatever MP3 files you can put on your computer, you can also put on your MP3 player.
An Ipod IS an MP3 player made by Apple. They are well designed and easily sync with Apple’s on-line music store ITunes but there are many, many other brands of MP3 players out there from the super-cheap and basically disposable to the very elaborate with lots of memory or hard disk space. MP3 players in general existed way before Apple developed Ipods. Apple just did its typical thing and developed a product that had an easy to use interface, looks attractive, and then marketed it well. There isn’t just one type of Ipod either. They come in a very wide variety of physical and storage sizes with very different prices. Other devices like computers and cell phones can play MP3 files too.
My MP3 player looks sort of like an Ipod but it was made by Samsung and it does everything I need for about $50 including play videos. MP3 players can often do things other than play MP3 music. You can use some of them to store full-length movies and watch them on a tiny screen, use them as backup devices for any type of file, or read text files. There is a lot of variety out there and the Ipod certainly isn’t the only game in town.
Is isn’t a drive, it’s flash memory that the PC treats as a drive.
I have a couple of inexpensive Coby MP3 players.
some mp3 players are hard drives and not flash memory.
Not to hijack or anything, but:
Not sure what you are confused about. Rectangles are objects with four sides, and four right angles. Squares are rectangles with the additional constraint that all four sides are the same length.
Therefore, all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares.
And, all iPods are MP3 players but not all MP3 players are iPods.
A square is a special case of a rectangle, one in which all sides are the same length.
iPods are more than MP3 players. Depending on the model, they can also play movies, games, and run many of the same Apps that the iPhone can. They can also play music purchased from the iTunes store (the largest retailer of music in the world), something that generic MP3 players can’t.
there are non-iPod mp3 players that play movies and games.
Which ones? I am anxious to have my ignorance fought.
Thanks!
It depends on the model, but in general, players that are on the larger side will have a hard drive. Ones that are in the 20 - 80 GB range, but even that is not absolute. With flash memory becoming cheaper by the day, it will be conceivable that an 80 GB MP3 player will be a flash player.
I wish I could be more specific. You will probably have to research the models yourself on CNet.
iPods, for one. (The classic design, not the Nano, iTouch, or iPhone, etc.)
Dude, you’re the one who said it, not I.
Anythingbutipod’s search results for hard-drive based players
Be warned. They’re fugly.
Nor do they fit in my watch pocket.
Thanks!
Well, the iPod Classic might.
Is it square or rectangular?
MP3 is a fairly old (at this point, Anno Domini 2009) audio compression codec.
While it has good compression ratios at good quality, what makes it unattractive to corporations (such as Apple) is that there is no DRM (digital rights management) built in.
I believe Apple uses the AAC codec for encoding music for sale on iTunes. AAC wrapped with DRM. AAC doesn’t necessarily mean DRM, though. Nero, for example, can encode AAC wrapped to MP4 for AAC without the DRM.
From a quality/size standpoint, AAC and MP3 are pretty equal. I used to be WAY into audio encoding as a hobby, and as a means of backing up my extensive CD library (anyone else remember r3mix? I used to frequent that site religiously)
That said:
An iPod or iTunes can both flawlessly play MP3 and AAC files.
Actually probably any commercial MP3 player (or iPod) can play both. I’m not sure off the top of my head what DRM or audio format the Zune uses, but I suspect it can play both MP3 and AAC
If you rip a CD (using iTunes) you can encode with any of the following:
[ul]
[li]AAC[/li][li]AAIF[/li][li]Apple Lossless[/li][li]MP3[/li][li]WAV[/li][/ul]
…all of which will play flawlessly on an iPod.
So what matters?
“Good” encoded MP3 or AAC files are transparent (transparent in the audiophile sense) to the source WAV file (what you get if you rip a CD without compression)
What “transparent” means - in a double-blind listening test, you are unable to distinguish the compressed file from the source file. There are dozens of freeware programs that let you set up tests like this; I’ve tried many tests and can say that both AAC and MP3 can be transparent with good encoding settings around 128 kb/sec.
Where the different file formats come in is in the DRM. Like I said, Apple (iTunes) uses an AAC format with Apple DRM. So anything you purchase off of iTunes will only be playable in iTunes or on an iPod. I suspect the same is true (Microsoft DRM, Microsoft format) for the Zune.
Pretty much any “MP3 Player” will be able to handle all of the relevant formats - you only get into compatibility issues when you get into music purchased from a particular digital vendor.
So the player you pick should be based on what music purchase system you want to use.
I’ve only ever used iTunes - the library is pretty good. Can’t speak for anything else.
Yeah, where’d the idea that iPods aren’t hard drive based come from? Sure, the Nano, Shuffle and Touch are flash memory, but all the “standard” iPods are hard drives.
Any recommendations on a low-cost model?