Saturday, November 3, 2007

Why A Portable MP3 Player Should Be In Your Future

For many years the music industry dictated to consumers how they could buy the music that they wanted to hear. Did you like only one or two songs by an artist? Too bad. You still had to buy the whole album or tape. But the power to select the music that we want to listen to, and play it wherever we want, has been ushered in by the digital age, and today even cheap portable mp3 players are capable of some surprising flexibility.

For many years in the past there was no credible way to make copies of the music that was sold. That all began to change when tape cassette recorders began to get popular. At last you had a way to record song tracks onto your own tape and take them with you to play while you were traveling. But tapes are not the easiest medium to work with, and they introduced some unfavorable listening characteristics of their own too. But it was all we had for song portability.

Then along comes the CD and it changed forever the way that music is played and heard. CDs could store the huge files needed for digital sound and so the sound quality improved dramatically. They could also be taken anywhere you wanted to go and played in portable CD players. It wasn't long before folks started figuring out how to convert music files from CDs to digital files that could be played on their computers, and that led to the mp3 revolution that we now have in place.

Today portable mp3 players are quickly becoming the standard for listening to music, because all you need is a source that has the digital music files you want to listen to, and you can then download the files onto your mp3 player and take them with you wherever you go. It's simple, easy, and the best rated mp3 players take up very little room, making them perfect for folks on the go.

Actually MP3 is only one of the digital formats used to encode music, but it has somehow become the moniker for all digital song files. The most popular file format these days is WMA(Windows Media Audio). And there are a handful of others too, but they all seem to conveniently fall under the heading of "mp3 files".

Now you no longer have to buy the entire album if you like to just listen to a few songs on that album. You can download those songs individually, save them to your computer hard drive and then transfer them whenever you want to your mp3 player. And you can make several copies of those songs without losing any sound quality, because they are all in digital format and will always sound the same regardless of how many times they are copied.

So as you can see, portable mp3 players have become a powerful tool in the hands of music lovers everywhere. There are lots of cheap portable mp3 players available these days, so if you haven't joined the digital music revolution already, why not give it a try soon?

Thad Pickering writes on many consumer related topics including audio and video. You can find out more about best portable mp3 players and best rated mp3 players by visiting our Home Theater website.



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MP3 Downloads

MP3 is a popular encoding and compression format for digital audio. The term MP3 is an acronym for MPEG-1 Layer 3. Using the MP3 format, larger digital audio files can be shrunk to a fraction of their size, losing a little of the sound quality in the process. Compared to the reduction in file size and ease of download, the reduction in quality is negligible and usually not very noticeable.

MP3 downloads are becoming hugely popular these days, because they allow several songs or pieces of audio to be stored without occupying a large amount of storage space.

MP3 files can be played either on a computer, using software applications such as Winamp or Windows media player, or they can be played on specialized MP3 players such as the Apple IPod. MP3 audio files may be played on recently manufactured DVD Players and CD players.

MP3 files are usually downloaded from websites on the Internet. Once downloaded, MP3 files can also be copied to compact discs or to MP3 players, using a data transfer cable.

MP3 files of popular music are available for download for as low as $1. Websites such as the ITunes online music store, operated by Apple, are very popular and boast of a huge library of music that can be purchased online. Even though MP3 files can be downloaded from the Internet for free, downloading copyrighted music without permission is illegal and can be termed piracy.

MP3 downloads help a person to build a music library. MP3 downloads also helps upcoming and unknown artists promote their music cost effectively. All they need to do is to post their music online for free downloads and they can be sure of reaching a large audience.

MP3 Downloads provides detailed information on MP3 Downloads, Free MP3 Downloads, MP3 Download Software, MP3 Download Sites and more. MP3 Downloads is affiliated with CD Covers



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Looking For an MP3 Player?

If you don’t have an mp3 player, and even if you do, you should check out all the new stuff that’s going on. I’m hoping this article will give you some idea of what kind of mp3 player you want and some tips on what to look for in an mp3 player.

Maybe you work out and need something small and skip-proof for running or lifting. Maybe you have an 8 hour (or longer) plane ride when you go home and need to pass the time. Maybe you want a new one just for the sake of having a new one. Whatever it is, this article should help you choose.

First, for those of you who want something for working out: The two most important things to look for are size/weight and solid state memory, things CD players lack. You want something that you can clip to your shorts or strap to your arm that won’t interfere with your movements, and you want it to be light enough so you don’t even notice it. (Tip: Get a lithium ion battery to save even more weight.) To be sure that your player will not skip if you move too much or too fast, get one with solid state internal Flash memory, which has no moving parts so it can’t skip. These are usually available as 64 to 512 MB models, with a 64 MB model holding roughly an hour of music. Prices typically range from $100 to $300.

On the other hand, you may want to store all 16,000 songs in your collection on your mp3 player so you never hear the same one twice. In this case you need a hard drive based mp3 player, commonly known as an mp3 jukebox, for which you could pay up to $500. It will be a little bigger and heavier than and not quite as durable as a solid state mp3 player, but that isn’t a concern if you just want to sit around and listen to music. And they are still far more portable than a CD player.

Torn between a small, light, solid state mp3 player and a hard drive based player that holds thousands of songs? Well, the iPod Mini may be for you! The iPod Mini is just one model in a new breed of small hard drive mp3 players. They are a little lighter and smaller than normal hard drive players, and hold more songs than the average solid state mp3 player. (Did I mention the iPod Mini comes in blue, green, gold, and pink?) That’s it for the main differences, but here are some more things you should look for when making a purchase: long battery life, an FM tuner, voice recorder, an easy to read screen, and compatibility with your computer.

If you’re looking to purchase online, I recommend www.amazon.com. But first you should check www.mp3-player-guide.com (which has a buyer’s guide and reviews) so you can make a better decision.


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