 |
 |
|
|
||
Introduction to Digital Audio Players
Digital Audio Players (DAPs) are also commonly referred to as MP3 players, after one of the file formats they play; however they usually play many kinds of files.
>>>TECHNICAL TERM: DIGITAL AUDIO PLAYER
While you can listen to podcasting on your computer, as we’ve learned above, you can use the programs we downloaded above to get podcasts, then synchronize (“sync”) them onto your digital audio player so you can listen to it on the go.
DAPs are available in different styles, depending on what you want. Since new technology seems to change every day, the best solution to find a specific make and model suitable to you (that won’t be out of date by the time you read this) is to go onto some shopping comparison sites to check out current brands and their features.
http://www.nextag.com/
This is a great site that has all kinds of digital audio players from high quality to not-so-high quality.
http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/
This site is very valuable to help you get quality and value when selecting a digital audio player. (Make sure you type the URL the way it is written above, as the extra .com is necessary to take you to the right page).
Three types of digital audio players
- Portable MP3 CD player. If you want to be able to listen to MP3s and CDs containing music or MP3 files, you can buy a portable MP3 CD player. A CD can hold several hours of MP3 music files and these cost less than £120.
- If you want to listen to MP3s and don’t require a lot of space, you can buy MP3 players that have a little bit of room in a storage device like a memory card. These are called flash-based digital audio players. Most of these players have up to 1GB of storage space and cost between £25 and £100.
- If you listen to a lot of MP3s or really big files, you may need a larger hard-drive based digital audio player to store greater amounts of files for you. These are commonly called “digital jukeboxes.” They typically have 20GBs of storage space or more and will generally run over £100.
As you can see, there’s a digital audio player for every taste and budget. Shop around on the Internet and at an audio store and you may find the one that is suitable for you.
Companies are always coming out with different models and upgrades so rather than reviewing specific models, we’ve simply included a list of some of the leading digital audio player manufacturers. This is not an exhaustive list, but simply a list of some of the key players in alphabetical order.
Check out their individual sites to see what kind of MP3 players they offer.
http://www.panasonic.com/flash.html
http://www.usa.philips.com/Index.html
You may also want to consider looking at eBay for some excellent values on MP3 players as well!
 |
 |
