In Reply to: VCD, DVD & PSX Games explained! Again! posted by Scott Saunders on Thursday, 30. November 2000 at 19:39 Bali Time:
Additonal to above post i have also noticed a few poeple asking about MP3! This is a wonderful format and i am a big rap for it!
Basically MP3 is and audio compression technique that enables a whole song to be converted from a wav file (orginal format, that with what you would have a basic audio cd) around 45 - 60MB depending on the length of the song, into a mp3 file which makes the same song 4 - 5MB without losing much quality at all! Hence the reason alot of people are getting involved in it! Due to its size it has become a hobby of some people to collect music on there computers. I am an addict and have probably around 200cd's at last count on my computer!
You can do one or two things with MP3 music files, they are convert them back to a wav file from an mp3 file, plenty of programs on the internet can do this for you! and them copy them to a cd, this will enable the cd to be played like a normal Audio CD.
The other is you can play the MP3 file on your computer or in variuos MP3 players that are now availble!
There was a big concern from the music industry about lost revenue but it seems as the larger comapines, i.e. sony, samsung etc.. have embraced the technology and there variuos different types of things that can play MP3 these days!
I will go through a few for you!
Firstly, most poeple would have heard of the basic, you get an MP3 player and put in a flash card, memory stick (it depends what brand you buy but generally they all do the same thing), around 64MB which would enable you to have around an hour of music! Simple isnt it! Files can be transferred to and from this card very easily via your computer and what usually is a USB connection! This is probably the most well known system going around at the minute but i think it has limitation as the actually 64MB card can be quite expensive! There are alteratives!
There is a thing out at the minute which is called the "Nomad Jukebox" which actually has a 6GB hard drive and can store around 100cd's on it and is about the same size as a normal personal Discman! It cost around $1000 so quite expensive!
Probably the best alternative is a fairly new release, not sure who makes it but, Its exactly like a personal Discman, can play audio cd's but can also play MP3 cd's! It only cost around $400 and which the price of CD's these days (around 80c) you can have up to 5 - 10 albums on the one cd and play music from the one cd for hours!
I hope this has explained a few things for the poeple that needed a little explanation!
Cheers
Scott Saunders