I'll second the recommendation for Dwayne O'Brien's Song Pilot CD.
As to the mechanics of MP3's and all that, it seems that a little more explanation is in order for some of our members.
First, MP3 and WMA are just different flavors of compression formats. As a rough guideline, converting the tunes from a regular CD format to MP3 or WMA will reduce the file sizes by a factor of 10. That's why people say you can get 10x as many songs on a CD filled with songs that have been converted to MP3.
A free lunch? Well, not quite. Purists will remind us that you will actually lose a little bit of audio quality in the conversion process. Unless you're a fairly critical listener, I doubt you'll notice the loss. Heck, a bunch of my RVer friends have a hard enough time haring their digital watches and telephones going off. They'd have a hard time distinguishing a CD recording from an old album!
OK, now we're on to players. Two basic types: (1) Fixed storage and (2) Hard drive storage. Most all of these players will play all the different compression formats (WMA, MP3, etc.). The difference is whether or not they have a memory chip or an actual moving hard drive. As a general guide for this moment in time, if the device you're looking at has more than 1 gig of storage capability, then it's got a moving hard drive.
The hard drive players are generally about the size of a pack of cigarettes (plus or minus a little in each dimension). The memory chip players can be really small. The upside to the hard drive players is that hard drive storage is cheaper per Gig of storage than the memory card players.
When people talk about playing tunes on their iPaq, they are saving MP3's to a memory card and then inserting that memory card in their iPaq. I've got an iPaq and can tell you this works quite well.
I've also got a 20Gig hard drive player made by Creative Labs--the same company who makes sound cards for computers. It was a lower cost option to Apple's iPod... about half the price to be more precise.
iRiver makes a memory chip type device that holds 512Mb of songs. It sells for around $150. A 20-30 Gig Creative Labs hard drive player can be had for around $250-300. One "Gig" is equal to about 1000 "Megs".
The other detail that is sometimes lost on those new to the whole portable music scene is the process of converting regular CDs to MP3 or WMA format. This is called "ripping" a CD. The latest Windows Media Player software that comes with this capability already built in. You just insert a regular audio CD into your CD-ROM bay and then click on "rip." Also, any player you buy will probably also come with its own ripping software.
I own about 200 CDs and have my entire collection stored on my computer hard drive and my Creative Labs player. I can't tell you how handy it is to have every CD I own stored on something I can carry in my back pocket. I plug it into my stereo in my truck, at home, and at my hangar. I take it along with me when I travel and also use it as a Walkman when I run.
My RV-8 will definitely have an 1/8" stereo port for an MP3 player as will my Midget Mustang when I finish its restoration.
I know this is long and it's pretty basic for those who are familiar, but I think sometimes some of us techies talk over the heads of some of our less techno-savvy friends.
Best regards,
RW
