Portable Music Players in the year 2002Dec 27 '01 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Which type of portable player you need depends on your budget, needs, and available music collection. This outlines the types and costs of portable players.
They may be called "personal stereos" or portable music systems. They certainly are portable and personal. I've had the pleasure of using several types throughout the years, and I'm now the happy owner of my first truly portable MP3 player. Santa was good to me this year. Of course Santa got very confused when she... um, he, went to the local major electronic store to find my present. After the holidays, the wife told me what a nightmare it had been to find what I had asked for. She also explained to me that lots of other people who went into the personal stereo department were similarly confused and that the looks on the salesmen's faces could best be described as 'predatory.' I hope to clear up some of the mystery here, and allow you and your "Santa" to understand what kinds of machines do what. I shall start from the oldest technology and move forward to the latest. In order, the types of machines are: - Simple AM/FM radio - Cassette Tape - Portable CD - Portable MP3 player - Portable CD with MP3 capability RADIO: Pretty basic and simple, really. It's by far the cheapest way to get portable music. Some radios are built into the headphones which eliminates the need to have anything on a belt or fanny pack. They are also pretty good about battery usage, since there are no motors to power. But you have to be in range of a radio station for this to work. You also must be willing to give up any and all control of what you listen to. That's fine if all you want to listen to is the latest music, but if your tastes turn to anything non-current, this will not satisfy your needs. CASSETTE PLAYER: Also pretty basic now. And nowdays, they are not all that expensive. You can get these for under 30$ if you look around. They are good at what they do, and that is to let you play whatever music you have compiled onto tape anywhere you go. They are also one of the most robust technologies around; a major plus if you plan to exercise outdoors with it. The biggest negatives are that you must take the time to mix tapes - a time consuming task that not many people have the patience (or stereo equipment; tape players seem to be vanishing) or skill to do anymore, and an annoying hiss (noise) that is endemic to tapes. Noise reduction helps, but that doubles the cost of your player and you MUST record the tapes on the stereo using the identical noise reduction to use it. Also, tape players eat batteries a lot (and the occassional tape, so don't use any irreplacable tapes.) CD PLAYER: Still a favorite for many people. Superior sound quality if you are in a quiet enough area to appreciate it, which you won't be if you are a jogger inside a city. But they also skip - a major problem if you are a jogger in a city. Newer units have what is called Skip protection, which is really nothing more than spinning the disc twice as fast and buffering X seconds of sound into memory so any skip is invisible to the user. The power consumption of CD players is legendary, and the anti-skip makes them even more hungry than before because the disc is spun so much faster. If you have a good collection of CDs (and who doesn't) but no computer or MP3 collection then this is a wise purchase if you spend extra to get skip protection and rechargable batteries. DIGITAL MP3 PLAYER: ah, the new kid on the musical block. MP3 is a sound compression format that compresses sound 10 to 1 with almost no audible change to the sound quality. You can use your computer to convert the songs you like most in your CD collection into MP3 files to use on these new-generation devices. Since they have no moving parts at all, they are the least fragile of the machines as long as you don't get them wet. They are also the tiniest of players. But they are also quite pricey when you realize that a 64meg chip only holds an hour of quality music. If you want to be able to play 4 hours of music on the road, you have to have 4 chips that you programmed with the music you want. These chips aren't cheap; currently 64 meg Compact Flash is 40$, which makes carrying 4 hours of music $160. The three kinds of memory are Compact Flash, Smart Media, and Memory Stick. Memory Stick is a proprietary format that only comes from Sony and only works in Sony gear, so I ignore it as an also-ran. Compact Flash is slightly bulkier then Smart Media, but is less expensive and very popular with the digital camera crowd (Yes, you can use a digital camera Compact Flash in a player that uses Compact Flash.) Smart Media is slightly more expensive and has less capacity available, but is very small indeed. There are also devices that hold several Gigabytes of music at a time. These units have little hard drives in them, just like a laptop. Such machines are not as shockproof as those that use memory chips. These players are worthless unless you a) have a computer, b) know how to hook a player up to the computer, and c) know how to "rip" music off of CDs and make your own MP3 files (assuming you don't have a large collection of MP3 files already.) Giving one of these to Grandma Gertrude who doesn't even own a TV will only gain you puzzled looks. Probably the most expensive route to take, although the complete immunity to skipping (the chip types, that is) is nice if you plan to use it while practicing Kendo. CD PLAYER WITH MP3: The newest newest kid on the musical block. This appears to be a standard CD player upon inspection. It will even play CDs, just like any other player. But the real advantage appears when you use your CD Burner on your computer at home to put together a group of MP3 songs to carry around. One blank disc costs less than a buck and can hold 700 Meg; that's 140 average length songs!! To get 700 Megabytes of Compact Flash, you'll have to fork over a heck of a lot more than a dollar. Larger than an MP3 player, but a familiar size and shape that won't bother most people. Some models even use less power than regular CD players by only spinning the disc long enough to fetch the entire song at one time to the memory for a few seconds, then letting the disc sit still for the remainder of the time the song plays. This stretchs out the battery life considerably. Another big plus is that changing out 140 songs is nothing more than changing the CD in the player. One wallet of CDs could hold thousands of tunes and take a body across country by car with ease. Any blank CD-R can be used to make your own collections. But as with the digital players, the user will have to have a computer and know how to "rip" music to MP3 format. They will not have to know how to hook up the player to the computer, however. If they know how to burn a CD, then they are set. Most of these do not work with CD-RW which is the erasable and reusable type of CD. But considering a box of 10 CD-Rs cost 5$ and can hold enough music to play without repeating for over two days, the non-reusability of the CDs is a non issue. This is best for people who want a "Portable Jukebox" and are computer literate rather than someone who will just use it to play CDs. These machines cost about triple what a basic CD player would cost, so make sure the recipient will be able to make use of the MP3 feature or plans to get into the MP3 scene before getting one. CONCLUSION: Which type of portable player you need depends on your budget, needs, and available music collection. Currently the music industry does not sell MP3 files directly, so you're on your own when it comes to aquiring tunes for your MP3 player if you go that route. I hope this has been helpful. Next Christmas, I'm going to leave printouts laying around for Santa to find.  |
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