For Christmas this year, my wife and I have agreed to exchange gifts that don’t exceed $89.00. I was thinking for my gift, an Mp3 player would be quite cool. In the store today, we say some Cd players that play mp3s, now I am undecided.
My questions are,
How do the Mp3 players work? Are the Cds just CDs full of Mp3 files? Can you then have a CD playing with 100 songs? What’s the scoop?
What are the advantages of an Mp3 player other than size?
As you guessed MP3 CD players can play regular CDs and CDs filled with MP3 files. Many can read the ID information to display the song and artist. MP3 CD players are cheaper than MP3 players but larger. They are also easier for swapping music since you just have to throw another CD into them. The MP3 players require more expensive flash media and hold fewer songs. A CD can hold 650 - 700 MB of files, the players usually come with 128 MB.
The number of songs on a CD depend on the compression setting. Most CD MP3 players advertise 150 songs per CD.
Yes, exactly. You just burn a data CD full of MP3 files.
The player lets you navigate through the folders to choose songs. Usually, there are two “shuffle” modes - one to shuffle all the songs in a folder, and one to shuffle all the songs on a disc. Also two “repeat” modes, one to repeat a single track, and one to repeat a folder.
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
An MP3 CD is, indeed, just a CD full of MP3s. You can have as many files as you want on the disc, up to the maximum capacity of 700MB. At 256kbps (essentially CD quality) you’ll get a bit over six hours of playtime. At 128kbps (acceptable quality) you’ll get about twelve and a half hours. Of course, it’s likely that the battery would run out long before you run out of music. As for how music is organized, it depends on the device. Some read only the filenames, some read the ID3 tags that store artist, title, track and other information, and some have you organize the files into folders.
In regards to the solid-state MP3 players, capacity varies from device to device, but they’ll generally be smaller than CDs by a good bit. The advantage is smaller size, they’re not susceptible to shock or vibration (good for listening while running or excercising), and they have longer battery live since there’s no moving parts. The downside is that you’ll need to pay more to get significant capacity. Some solid-state MP3 players can be used as portable storage devices, allowing you to stash any kind of file on them to move from computer to computer.
I’ve had two of these - first one I got (some time ago) was a heap of crap in so many ways I just sent it back. The one I just bought is pretty good - at least to my tired old ears (haven’t tried the 'phones that came with it, prob crap). Having nearly been burned once, I went to the store with a CD full of MP3s and some headphones to make sure it worked (they had two on offer - I chose the one that didn’t put a big gap between the tracks, otherwise there wasn’t much to choose - both were “no-name” models)
The CD MP3 players aren’t nearly as funky as the iPods or Rios or whatever, but then they are much cheaper, I only got mine because I found a large number of CDs was too heavy to schlep around - 1 or 2 MP3 CDs will see me through a journey or two.
A CD that you buy off the shelf does not have MP3s on it. The files are in a different format.
A CD that you burn on your computer can have either MP3s or the regular CD format. If you put raw MP3s on it, you can fit more songs on the CD, but you won’t be able to play it in just any old CD player like your Walkman or your car stereo.
You can only use a CD drive that’s meant to read data, such as the one in your computer-- or an MP3 CD player, which is specifically designed to play MP3s off a CD. An MP3 CD player is more versatile than a regular CD player, and you can carry around discs that have more music on them.
Ok, now how should the CD be configured. Can I store the Mp3s in file folders such as categorized by genre? Or do I just put it all in one CD with no ordering?
Also, Capt B. Phart mentioned that there is a gap between tracks. How much so? Is it the same as when you skip tracks on a regular CD?
The second question I have is? Given an $89.00 budget what would you choose? An Mp3 player with 128MB or a CD player with Mp3 capabilities.
Any software you have that burns CDs will organise the files in such an order that the machine can access them. I don’t think you have an option on CD-MP3 players to browse directories… it plays the files in order, just like any other CD player.
As for which one to buy: what’s your priority? If you want something small and extremely portable, go with the solid-state player. If you want to be able to carry your MP3 music and your normal CD music at the same time, go with the CD player.
I own an RCA RP2410 MP3 CD player and it comes with a little postage-stamp-sized window that displays text. I can easily scroll through directories and this can easily be significant if you name your files along the lines of:
[ul][li]Joe Cocker - Mad Dogs & Englishmen - Honky Tonk Women[/li][li]Joe Cocker - Mad Dogs & Englishmen - Bird on a Wire[/li][li]Joe Cocker - Mad Dogs & Englishmen - Sticks and Stones[/li][li]Joe Cocker - Mad Dogs & Englishmen - Feelin’ Alright[/ul][/li]
Since the little window can’t possibly show one of the monster filenames, you’re better off creating a “Joe Cocker” directory on your CD, with a subdirectory called “Mad Dogs”, containing files named only after the song titles.
My ipod was a bit more expensive, but I’m just curious about how you arrived at the $89 figure for your xmas gifts.
It also definitely has moving parts, as does any CD player.
I’m not really sure how we got to this number. I think a month ago we decided that we would do $60, but it grew. I just thought that $89.00 would be a good number that kept most options open and allow a frivolous fun gift yet not break our budget causing us to feel guilty on wasting money.
A lot of the “off market” MP3 CD players are pretty flimsy. Even MP3, solid state players are of questionable build quality.
eBay. That’s what I’d do.
My Rio Volt can navigate through folders, and so can both of the car MP3/CD players I’ve had.
The play order can be different on different players, though. Suppose you have folders A and B, with subfolders A/A1, A/A2, B/B1, and B/B2: My old Aiwa car player (good riddance!) would play A, B, A1, A2, B1, B2. My new JVC player would play A, A1, A2, B, B1, B2.
Even the order within one folder can be different. The Aiwa always used alphabetical order, but the JVC uses the order the files were recorded (which may not be alphabetical, depending on your burning software).
brujo: I’d get an MP3 CD player due to the increased capacity, unless you need to be jumping around while listening. You can also carry multiple CDs with you, raising capacity even more.
What Alereon said. I bought a solid state MP3 player since I take it running, but my sheila bought an MP3 CD player cause she only listens to it on the bus = heaps cheaper with more songs.
- Nope - to respectfully disagree, some will allow you to browse folders.
My Rio Volt can navigate through folders, and so can both of the car MP3/CD players I’ve had.
No kidding? That’s cool. I guess it’s been too long since I shopped for one.
I’m going to take it to the gym, but my regular CD player works fine so this should be pretty good.
I’m definitely leaning towards an Mp3 CD player. Does anybody have any brands that they are very fond of? I’ve noticed that Virgin is manufacturing electronics now, are those any good?
Thanks all for the advice so far.
The best brand out there is iRiver, which has a range of prices for their players…they seriously can’t be beat.