So, is MP3 any good?

Electronics Times, Feb 7, 2000

ET puts some of the latest MP3 players through their paces for sound and styling

MP3, the first buzzword technology of the 21st century, is allegedly threatening a musical revolution. Not everyone is in favour of the compression technology that can reduce a CD's content to around a tenth of its original size. But leaving the politics aside from a moment, there is still one question that needs to answered: is it any good?

The answer, as could be expected, is both yes and no. No, an MP3 file is not as clear as its CD counterpart, but yes, it's better than listening to a cassette on a personal stereo. And it is here that the technology is starting to make its mark, with an ever-growing range of portable MP3 players.

The standard player has an internal flash memory, normally 32Mbyte, that can be expanded with the addition of an external flash card. Just how much music this can contain depends on how much you compress your MP3 file, and it will be down to individual users to decided where the payoff between size and quality exists. But a compression to 128Kbit/s offers something approaching an optimum balance.

The sound quality across all the players tested here was universally good, as was the overall build quality. But despite the players' easy of use once loaded up, the process of converting your CD to MP3 and saving on to your player remains irksome. For example, how much do you need to compress the Chemical Brothers to get them to fit on to a 32Mbyte flash card?

There is one last point that owners of portable MP3 players need to remember - downloading copyright music off the Internet is illegal. It is also very time-consuming over a standard modem link which, for the time being, is probably a greater disincentive than the illegality of it.