What is MP3 player? MP3 player can be a standalone
hardware which can play MP3 files, such as most the MP3 players sold in the
electronic or computer shops; or it can be a software which enable the computer
to play MP3 music, there are many free software MP3 players on the internet
for download such as winamp.
Although there are issues of music copyright, most of the
leading consumer electronic producers in the world have at least one model
of MP3 players for the market, because the attraction of the huge market of
MP3 lovers, some even have to contradict their own action: for example some
earlier DVD player model do not support MP3, but now MP3 support is almost
a standard for DVD players.
Types of MP3 players There are mainly two type of
MP3 players (excluding the DVD players which support MP3). The first one is
the traditional CD / MP3 walkman type, the music lover just burn the MP3 music
into a CD with computer, then enjoy the music burned on this CD later. The
second one is the flash memory based MP3 players, these MP3 player generally
have built-in flash memory, such as microdrive or flash, this provide a crucial
advantage over the traditional walkman type: it can be much more compact,
and it is generally much more robust as there are not mechanical parts, but
the flash memory is an expensive form of data storage, so the cost is generally
higher and the storage capacity is limited. Now many clever manufacturer does
design an extra slot for future memory expansion, so the music lover can decide
to upgrade the memory in the future once the price of the memory cards are
reduced. However as the flash memory based MP3 players generally connect to
the computer USB / USB2.0 port to download music, so there is also no need
of a CD burner any more ( as required by CD / MP3 walkman ), so for people
who do not have CD burner, this type is actually much cheaper.
There is a slight concern though, the USB especial USB2.0
driver for flash memory based MP3 player is not very stable, some users who
are not familiar with computers may face difficulty to install the driver
into the computers, and sometime the computer may crash or fail to detect
the MP3 player. Some clever manufacturer tried to make the MP3 player as easy
to operation as television or fridge, such as Tekeer DMP666+ MP3 player, it
is equipped with a audio record cable, so users can easily record music from
any audio source with Audio-out jack, such as TV, digital radio or DVD player.
