Posted: 12/20/2004 12:56:52 PM EDT
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My CD player went Tits up and I want to buy a new one. Problem is I walk into best buy and now they have CD/MP3/FM tuners… Plus 1GIG MP3s and a lot of other stuff like black berries and junk I know nothing about. I have about 150 music CD.s and would like to categorize and listen to them without going thru a lot of hassle so the system must be easy to run. Maybe a windows or directory format? I would like power jacks for the office and my truck with a jack to run to my trucks tape deck and if it came with an FM tuner that would be great. . I plan to spend 100-150.00 on it. So what do I want? Thanks. |
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What you want is to wait until after Christmas and hope the prices come down. Software-wise, you need to convert all your CD's to MP3 or other format at about 128-192 encoding level which makes each song about 3-4 meg each. Not as good as CD quality, but you can put more on the player. You can do this before you buy your hardware with may programs. I use Nero myself. If you really want to get serious about catagorizing, then you fill all the fields like title, author, song name, album name, etc. I myself, only care that the name of the MP3 is the name of the song and author (I.E. Rush-Limelight) and then I just dump them into a file directory called Rush. I'm not very particular about all the other details. Hardware-wise for a max of $150, the best you can do will be a cheaper 512 meg flash player, or a CDROM player that handles MP3's. $150 will buy you a great CDROM MP3 player but it will always be bulkier than a flash or hard drive MP3 player. MP3 only players "tend" to have better on-screen information and computer integration and organization capabilities (I.E. You can make playlist with songs in particular order by mood, type, etc). Some CDROM players will handle playlists, but not generally as nicely. With an MP3 CDROM player, you just need to burn CD's with MP3's. The battery life for either is pretty much the same for both, but MP3 only players often use special rechargeable batteries that can only be recharged when plugged in the computer (not all, but many). The CDROM MP3 players generally run off of 2 AA's, but normally also have a power input jack that you can plug an external power supply to. If you plan on jogging or other very physical movement of the players, then the CDROM's are not nearly as durable as the Flash players. Since you state that you will be pretty much using it in the truck or office, then a MP3 CDROM player should be fine. Vehicle cassette adaptors are readily available for either, but often come bundled with the CDROM MP3 players. With 60+ second antiskip, vehicle usage is not an issue for the CDROM players. I would suggest a good $75-$100 CDROM MP3 player package for your price range and usage. It will come with better head phones, probably an inline remote control, come bundled with a cassette adaptor and hold more music (650 meg per CD vs 512meg total for the flash players). Some of the auto CDROM MP3 packages even come with an external remote you mount to your dash to easily control the player. Basically, the cheap flash MP3 players tend to suck in most ways except for "coolness" and "size". There are a few decent ones, but they don't add a lot over a CDROM MP3 player other than size (maybe durability) since CD media is so cheap. The expensive hard drive ones are nice, but that's why they are expensive. Since the CD's are burnt on your PC, you can use traditional file/directory structures for ease of use. As black CDR media is about $.25 each (probably even cheaper), you won't have any issues with making as many disks as you want andit's much easier to share music with office workers by giving them a CD than to transfer it through the computer and you wont be breaking company network equipment usage policy. |