The Digital Audio Revolution Plays On
Sun Review August 4, 2001

Have you decided to join the MP3 revolution or are you still wondering what all the fuss is about? MP3 is the name for a digital music format that compresses an audio signal by removing all superfluous information (the redundant and irrelevant parts of a sound signal that the human ear doesn't hear anyway). The result in real terms is that MP3s shrink the original sound data from a CD by a factor of 12 without sacrificing sound quality. This, in turn, lets users store them on their computers, upload and download them over the Internet, and even e-mail them to friends.

As an example of how great the powers of MP3 are, consider the classic Neil Diamond song "Sweet Caroline". As a standard CD file, it fills up 32MB of hard-drive space, which takes almost two hours to download with a 56K modem. When converted to MP3 format, this same file is just over 3MB, only one-tenth the size! Yes, it would still take ten minutes to download it from theWeb, but you can store multiple MP3s on your hard drive or download them rapidly over a cable or ADSL connection.

Because MP3 files are so easily transferred across the Internet, controversy arises when copyrighted songs are sold and distributed illegally. Before you start looking for songs, you should know that many MP3s available on the Web are illegal, offered without the consent of the band or its label. Download these only at your own moral discretion. Of course there are also many sites that offer MP3s for legal download, sometimes with a price tag attached.

Despite all the controversy, there is the hope that one day, musicians may be able to use this technology to distribute their own songs from their own website to their listeners, eliminating the need for record companies. Costs to the consumer would decrease, profits for musicians would increase, and record execs would have a lot of free time on their hands.

The popularity of portable MP3 players has surged over the past year, and MP3 players are now also available for your car and home stereo systems. An MP3 player offers several advantages over most other types of portable audio players such as cassette, CD, and MiniDisc players. Using your PC you can build your own playlists that contain only the songs you want. MP3 players are fairly compact and don't have any moving parts, so you won't need to worry about the skipping and buffering problems experienced by portable CD players.

However, with the variety of storage formats, software, interfaces and file formats available, shopping for a portable digital audio player is much more confusing than buying a Walkman. ZDNet offers an interactive online guide to help you pick the right player - point your browser to listen.zdnet.com, then select "Find the Right Gear" to find the right player, download appropriate software and find those MP3 files.

Talk to Sam or Brent at Andre's Audiotronics about portable MP3 players or integrated CD/MP3 players for your car starting at $130.

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