what kind of card to recommend for mp3s

[nyteowl]

I'm pretty new to this and of course want to get a mem. card to have my zire play mp3s. i keep seeing SD which means?? what is compact flash? i'm trying to serach for cards but am confused as to all the diff. types. I just want one that works on my zire 71.

also,

if i get a 64mb card ---appx how many mp3s??
etc etc.

[JaK]

Hi

SD is the accronym for 'Secure Digital'. Sandisk and Lexar are good brands to buy from. I bought myself a 256MB SD card from sandisk; working great! ;)



You can figure out how many mp3's u can fit into the card by dividing the size of the card by the average size of your mp3's.

The average size for an mp3 is 4MB, therefore, with a 64MB card, you should be able to hold approximately 16 Mp3's

:D

[ghostkm]

Yeah his right with the size and the amount of mp3s you can fit on 64MB SD Card. I got 256MB SanDisk card and it works nicely.

Ghost...

[Ruffie]

Well, it also depends on the quality (kbps) of your mp3... sacrificing quality will increase the number u can fit in. Default is usually 128kbps. 96kbps is still relatively ok in quality. I think I remember reading somewhere (correct me if I'm wrong) that the absolute lowest quality you can get is 64kbps (~quality of fm radio)

[jus68]

i totally recommend the Sandisk 256. For the past 2 months, I've had absolutely no problems with it and it's totally enough storage space for everything! It's cheap and its very good value.

[madkins007]

The quality of a MP3 file is directly related to its size. If you have a song that is, for example, 4MB in size at 128kbps, it would be significantly smaller at 96kbps (about 3MB). This comes at a small sacrifice in quality- I say it is a 'small' sacrifice because it is usually going to be unnoticable with the small earphones we generally use.

It is like trying to fully appreciate the difference between radio, 8 track, cassette, and CD. In a car, with the background noises and other concerns, they are all about equally OK sounding. To fully appreciate the differences, you need to be in a good 'listening room' sort of set-up- then the vast difference between the horrible fidelity of 8 track and the clean sounds of CD will become readily apparent.

If you cannot really tell a difference, with the way you really USE your PDA/MP3, between 128 and 96kbps, then why take the extra disk space?

(Of course, some programs do not 'reformat' 128 to 96 easily, or leave a bunch of garbage when the do. RealOne does a good job, but the time it takes may negate the space savings!)