[LMB] MP3 advice

[Mark Allums]

Meg Justus wrote:
>> Multiply the number of files at 6 megs per file to get the size of a
>> whole CD.
>>
>> A CD holds 650 or 700 meg.  At 7 megs per song, that would be 100 songs.
>> (Not counting overhead.)
>>
>> The data takes up the same amount of room on the hard drive as on the CD.
>>
>> --Mark A.
> 
> Okay, you lost me.  An MP3 CD holds 650-700 meg?  I'm not going to be doing 
> much in the way of music, so the song comparison doesn't help me much.  So 
> the flash drive won't be able to hold that much.  Oh, well.
> 
> Megaera 

A standard audio CD capacity is about 650M.  80 minute CDs are about 
700M.  In uncompressed music.  If you convert the music to MP3's it will 
take about 100M on the hard drive.  In WMA format, it would take about 
50M.  This would vary more or less, depending on the bit-rate it was 
compressed to.

An MP3 CD is already compressed, so there is no savings when you move it 
to the hard disk.  If an audio book MP3 CD uses 2/3 of a standard CD, it 
will take about 400-450M.  If it used the whole CD, it would take the 
whole 650M.

That would not fit on a cheap 512M capacity MP3 player, but would fit on 
a larger 1G player.

A 1G SanDisk Sansa player is around $50.00 dollars give or take.  A 4G 
iPod Nano would hold about 6 full MP3 CDs worth, and costs $250.00. 
Cheaper players exist.  In songs, 4G is about 500-1000 songs.  In time, 
that might be something like 30-60 hours worth.

Or, you can fall back on the $19.95 CD player that knows about MP3 CDs.

--Mark A.