mp3 player help

cattychimp

hi, can anyone help.
I've never bought an mp3 player before and need some help. I want to get one that can hold at least 40 albums - how many GB would this be? What is the best brand / type of mp3 player is best and most reliable . Not that bothered how it looks , as long as its not too big

thanks for any help

superscaper

Depends on the format and quality of the music. Typical download album may be about 40 MiB. So 40 x 40 is 1600 MiB which is technically 1.68 x 10^9 bytes and many manufacturers incorrectly use GB (1 x 10^9) so look for anything labelled with 2 GB (it should really be GiB but don't get me started) or above. Do you need anything bigger for the future, as it is a solid state flash mp3 player will do. Anything significantly more (maybe 3 times more capacity or greater) you'll want a hard drive based player. Do you plan to do any running with it, does it need to be robust? If yes it should be flash. Do you have a particular media player you already use or have a preference for? Itunes music can only be played on an ipod in general, if you download from most other places it will be WMA most likely in which case you won't want an ipod. You'll probably very rarely actually use mp3 files unless you rip them from your own cds (or obtain music illegally) but even then ripping to WMA has it's advantages in terms of space (if it's mp3 format you can double my memory estimate above).

mascherano

sorry to get you started but why is GB wrong? what is GiB

superscaper

mascherano wrote: »

sorry to get you started but why is GB wrong? what is GiB

Giga is a decimal prefix under the SI standard. To use it with a binary number is just plain wrong and causes confusion. The reason so many people lose their "bytes" from the advertised space is many people might say 1 gigabyte is 1024 megabytes and so on. Whereas hard drive manufacturer's measure their gigabyte to be 1000 megabytes. The correct prefixes to use with binary numbers are the internationally recognised IEC binary prefixes. Gibibytes is 1024 mebibytes and so on. Giga binary you see. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefixes
Without standards, confusion and mistakes arise. Well, at least over the last couple of years it's (binary prefixes) starting to get used more prevalently, especially on techie sites etc.

Edit: told you it was a pedantic obsession (see my sig)

Cricri

40MB an album would be a 40 minutes album encoded at only 128kbps.
If you want 40 albums of various sizes at a more likely bitrate (like 160 or 192kbps), I'd suggest you go with a 4GB model.
Since these days, by 4GB they mean 4000000000 bytes, at 192kbps you'll get:
192*1024/8*60=1.44MB/minute
4e9/1.44/1024/1024=2650 minutes or 45 hours ish.

superscaper

Cricri wrote: »

40MB an album would be a 40 minutes album encoded at only 128kbps.
If you want 40 albums of various sizes at a more likely bitrate (like 160 or 192kbps), I'd suggest you go with a 4GB model.
Since these days, by 4GB they mean 4000000000 bytes, at 192kbps you'll get:
192*1024/8*60=1.44MB/minute
4e9/1.44/1024/1024=2650 minutes or 45 hours ish.

I was giving absolute minimum as I did say I was basing my calculation on a typical downloaded album. I was thinking about so many things besides purely memory in my post I forgot to mention about varying the bitrate of cd rips.

Cricri

I agree that it is possible to fit 40 albums on 2GB, but I think you'e lucky if you can.
Or, if you listen a lot of rap, which does not contain any music (apart from "boom boom hompf hompf") nor lyrics (apart from "Yeah, c'm'on, uhuh, uhuh"), then you can use variable bitrate compression, and that will compress them a lot. Heck, you can probably fit a lossy-compressed rap album on a floppy

mascherano

superscaper wrote: »

Giga is a decimal prefix under the SI standard. To use it with a binary number is just plain wrong and causes confusion. The reason so many people lose their "bytes" from the advertised space is many people might say 1 gigabyte is 1024 megabytes and so on. Whereas hard drive manufacturer's measure their gigabyte to be 1000 megabytes. The correct prefixes to use with binary numbers are the internationally recognised IEC binary prefixes. Gibibytes is 1024 mebibytes and so on. Giga binary you see. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefixes
Without standards, confusion and mistakes arise. Well, at least over the last couple of years it's (binary prefixes) starting to get used more prevalently, especially on techie sites etc.

Edit: told you it was a pedantic obsession (see my sig)

Thanks for the explanation, it was truly illuminating. I have read your sig before and have been meaning to ask you what it meant for a while. Besides, my head hurts when things arent decimal.