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Techno-files

Multiple choices for those who like their music on the go

By Riley Gay

For audiophiles who like their music on the go, there are some great digital audio players available that may help to make singing along a lot more mobile.

Whether you crave ultra-portability or maximum music storage, there are a number of portable devices on the market to satisfy your specific need.

All of these depend on using your personal computer to download or create compressed music files.

Compression, when used on digital audio files, is a way of reducing file size by dropping out redundant or unnecessary data, without appreciably degrading sound quality.

The more the file is compressed, of course, the more noticeable the difference from the original.

There are a number of compression formats in use, but the biggest news in portable digital audio thus far has revolved around MP3.

Besides being one of the first high compression formats available, it has been the most widely supported by numerous developers as well as digital audio player manufacturers.

Using a compression scheme that allows users to create and store near-CD quality music files (at an encoding rate of 128 kbps), MP3 files are only about a tenth the size of normal, uncompressed music files, making it a popular format for portability, or for sharing over the Internet.

Files encoded at near-CD quality consume only about 1 MB of storage space per minute of music as compared with the 10 MB of space needed for a typical, uncompressed, music file.

Even though the MP3 format was the first to gain widespread popularity, there are others that can accomplish the same feat as well, or even better.

One that is beginning to garner a good deal of support is Microsoft’s WMA, or Windows Media Audio format.

It offers CD-quality sound at an encoding rate of only 64kbps as compared to the 128kbps rate of MP3 files, effectively reducing the file size in half while retaining the same level of quality.

If you want to encode your own music tracks for use with a portable device, you may want to consider purchasing a player that supports the WMA format, along with MP3.

You can’t listen to these files using your current portable CD player. If you want to groove to these sounds you’ll need to have one of the newest generation of portable audio devices.

The best place to start when deciding which portable digital audio player to buy is to determine how, and when, you’ll be using it. Based on that, there are three very different form factors from which you can choose.

For joggers and workout enthusiasts, size and anti-skip capability are probably the most important issues.

For them, or anyone else who wants a compact and lightweight device, a memory-based player such as the Intel Pocket Concert Audio Player, for example, may be the solution. This type of player stores MP3 files on internal RAM memory, or on some type of removable memory card.

Such players range in price from about $150 to $300, depending mainly on the amount of onboard memory included in the device.

The average seems to be 64 megabytes, which will allow you to store about an hour of MP3-encoded music.

Many include a slot for adding external memory to increase storage. The Intel Audio Player doesn’t allow for the addition of more memory, however it’s one of only a few players that come equipped with 128 MB of onboard storage space.

With any of these memory-based devices, music files can be added or removed whenever you want to change your mobile collection.

If maximum storage space is your main consideration, you’ll want to check out a hard drive-based device, such as the Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox.

With 6 gigabytes of onboard storage, you can put more than 100 hours of music on this type of unit.

These devices are bigger (about the size of a portable CD player) and heavier than the memory-based players. But if size is not an issue, then for about $300 it’s a great way to carry all of your favorite music along with you.

As with memory-based devices, music can be written to, or removed from, these units at anytime through your computer.

A good compromise solution when it comes to storage size vs. portability may be found in one of the new “MP3/CD” players. About the size of the hard drive-based units, though not as heavy, these devices will play MP3 CDs that you “burn” yourself, using your computer’s CD-R/RW drive, if you have one. Unlike a standard CD player, MP3/CD players include software that allows them to decode and play MP3-encoded files. Since the capacity of most CDs is 650 MB, each disk can hold up to about 11 hours of MP3 formatted music. One advantage with this kind of device is that many are able to play prerecorded CDs as well, so discriminating audiophiles can still get the storage advantage of MP3 or WMA files without having to give up the higher quality inherent in prerecorded digital music disks.

The Sonicblue Rio Volt is a good MP3/CD player that sells for around $150. It will also handle rewritable disks, so that a single CD-RW can be recorded over and over again, which will save you a buck or two on media cost.

So, if you’re interested in digital audio on the go, there are some new choices to consider. Whichever form factor you settle on, these portable digital audio devices have finally made it easy to take all of your favorite music with you wherever you may roam.

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