I've found that it can open up even more than that. It allows you to manage all your music on the computer. I copy the CD and store it away, no need for racks and racks of CDs to be accessible. With a home network (wireless network that you can set up for $150 or less), you can stream the music to your stereo system and even control what is playing via a web interface.Hi Gang ....
Call me slow, but I just discovered how easy it is to copy CD's to the hard
drive using the Win Media Player. It's pretty much all automatic, and it
astounds me how much info is on the disk. This opens the door to copying
music to some sort of portable device for use in the car and while
travelling.
What sorts of devices, apart from an iPod, can be used for
this purpose?Amazon.com and all the other usual places have big lists under MP3 and Digital Media Players. They range from tiny things with under 32MB and cost less than $100 to "jukeboxes" with 40GB or more costing over $500. I have a 20 GB Rio Karma which I've put about 275 CDs on and I've been very happy with it.
Does MP3 or MP4 (that's the format, right?) sound pretty
good compared to a home system or a good sound system on the computer?That is the subject of flame wars that combine the worst of both audio and computer flame wars! As someone else mentioned, there a lots of choices, both in the method of compression and the extent of compression. The "standard" MP3 is 128 Kb/sec which results in about a factor of 10-15 space savings. I think most people can hear a difference between music compressed at this level and the uncompressed version if played side by side, but a good many people don't consider the difference to be particularly significant. If you are more picky you can compress less but of course your space savings goes down. It seems a fair number of people that are relatively picky about sound can live with compression at the level of 192-256 Kb/sec.
DanZ
-- * Dan Zaharevitz * Camp Springs, MD * [EMAIL PROTECTED]
