mp3 players for runners
 

Hi,

sorry this is more of an exercise forum question, but I live int he UK and I wanted the UK ppl advice, I am thinking of buying an mp3 player to take on my runs, I know there are some especially designed for runners, does anyone know of where I could get this for a reasonable price?? and can anyone advice on a quality make ??


thanks

Sandy

I hate it when I see a post unanswered! - I have no idea but I would suggest you try Dixons or Currys. MP3 players have no moving parts so shouls survive running better than walkmans or CD players.
Robert

I have one which I use when cycling.
It is made by LG, cost about £80, and I bought it from Dixons. (18 months ago)
It's less than 3 inches square, less than half an inch thick, and weighs almost nothing at all, so it slips easily into any pocket.

The main problem with mp3 players is the cost of memory, those with a lot of memory are rather expensive. Mine has 32mb built in, and I bought another 64mb at a computer fair, which cost me another £30. (about £55-£60 in shops) You can get some with huge amounts of memory but they are very, very expensive.

It is best to record songs especially to use on the mp3 player, most mp3s are recorded at, at least, 128kbps. This gives about one minute of music per mb of memory. I record stuff onto my computer at 64kbps which effectively doubles the capacity of my player (96mb gives me over 3hrs of music), there is a slight degradation of sound quality at this level, but not bad enough so you'd notice when out running or cycling.

Hope that's been some help

Karl

Thanks for that Karl, I only need about 1 hour worth of very motivating music to use while I am running, usually I download music on my PC, or I will record the music from a CD, is this what you are talking about, when saying:



if not let me know where I could find music especially recorded for mp3 players, e.g. is downloading from mp3.com good??? and copying some music from my own CD's??


thanks again for your help.

Apologies in advance if this gets a bit techno and strays from the low-carb theme, but I'd like to help sandy on this one if I can.

Yeah sandy, that's what I meant, Sorry, should have made that a bit clearer maybe.

Most music that you can download from the net is recorded at 128kbps or higher.
128kbps is generally regarded to be 'near CD quality'. 160kbps is regarded as 'CD quality', anything higher is getting into the realms of 'Studio quality'
I record my own music from CDs for my mp3 player at 64kbps, this is generally accepted to be equivalent to 'FM radio quality'.

I keep the music for my mp3 player in a folder of it's own, so as to keep it seperate from the rest of my music. This is what I meant by 'especially to use on the mp3 player'

I don't know what software you use but I can recommend 'Musicmatch Jukebox'. It can record and play mp3s.
If you have a CDwriter it can be used to make audio cds, and you can even use it to convert different music formats into mp3s, at whatever kbps level you choose.

I've never tried mp3.com but have tried many similar sites, peer 2 peer file sharing programs such as 'WINMX' can be useful too. These programs are similar to the infamous 'Napster'.
Anything you download from there will be at least 128kbps, sometimes as high as 320kbps (the higher the kbps, the bigger the file)
If I download music I then convert it to whatever kbps level I require with 'Musicmatch'

I know I keep banging on about 'kbps', but, unfortunately you need to take this into account unless you are prepared to spend a lot of money.

Hope that's a bit clearer, I'm quite handy with anything technical but communication is not one of my strong points - LOL

Karl

Thank you Karl, that's helpful, now I need to go shopping and try to find a mp3 player with reasonable memory!!! I feel it is so outrageous having to pay so much money for something so little !!!