MP3 Player, MP3 CD, or ATRAC CD?

Zaphod B

Might sound like a silly question since everyone seems to be going over to MP3 now but might I not be better off with a CD player that plays MP3s? I'm adverse to the idea of an ATRAC player on the grounds that it's another format to deal with and I'd rather have more compatibility, but how about an MP3 CD player? Obviously I'm not asking you to choose for me (I do have some initiative... Not much though ) but I'm not sure whether there'd be any point in me owning a dedicated MP3 Player rather than a CD player that could play both my CDs and my MP3s...

: I have a total of about 10Gb of MP3s (not including CD collection)
: I have about 60 CD albums
: I neither have nor particularly want USB2 (being very silly here but it's a matter of principle really - I got Firewire instead and have never used it )
: I listen to music on my CD discman for up to about 2 hours every day at the mo (that's just when I'm oot and aboot - not including listening to MP3s on PC)

So I've gone over that list again and I'm still not sure... I do want to listen to my MP3 collection outside of my house, but an MP3 CD player would let me do that. But no-one seems to own MP3 CD players, so is there a particular reason why that is so? Is there anything especially bad about them that I'm not aware of?

Sorry if I've missed some glaringly obvious fact about the faults of these CD players I just want to be sure they're not a valid alternative before I spend a lot of cash on an MP3 player that could be obsolete in a year :dunno:

Thanks

sceptre

Originally posted by Zaphod B
no-one seems to own MP3 CD players, so is there a particular reason why that is so? Is there anything especially bad about them that I'm not aware of?

Not really. Battery life is typically less on mp3/cd players compared with regular cd players (at least when playing mp3s) and there's often a load time delay (depending on the player really) but there isn't any other significant reason, apart from the obvious size difference between a wee mp3 player and a cd/mp3 player.

Let's put it this way: if you were buying a portable cd player there's no significant reason you wouldn't go for one with mp3 capability. I chose minidisc a few years ago and I'm happy with the option to carry around quite a few hours of music. These days I might just be tempted to get a 256meg mp3 player instead.

^whitey^

Originally posted by sceptre
Battery life is typically less on mp3/cd players compared with regular cd players (at least when playing mp3s)

Not strictly true at all ... flick through amazon or the argos catalog and you'll see they are the same, often times mp3/cd players have far better battery life as they don't have to spin the cd as much as a standard cd player which is what eats the battery. Correct me if i'm wrong.

Cheers

sceptre

whitey's right, just checked. The quoted battery times for the Sony ATRAC players cheat a bit, as they quote with an extra 2 batteries (using 4 instead of 2) (for 150 hours) but the clincher comes with the Panasonics listed in the catalogue - they explicitly state up to 37 hours for regular CD, up to 48 for an mp3 CD. Can't figure where I got that idea, sorry for the crap advice.

To be honest, even if whitey was wrong, battery consumption times for all players (CD and MD) have improved so much over the years that they're still amazing. The first portable CD player I had got 4 hours out of 4 alkaline batteries if I was lucky (had a lead plate at the bottom too, it was 1991). These days everything seems to quote 30 hours plus, with just one or two batteries, and 50-60 hours doesn't seem that uncommon.