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Old 22-07-2007, 22:44
Alvar Hanso
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hi all, I just bought a £30 MP3 player in tesco and was somewhat surpised to see it was 2GB and claimed to hold up to 640 tracks.

On the back it indicated that this number was based on an avergae file size being 2.9MB.

When I uploaded driver it read 1.8 GB and not 2 GB left
well having downloaded about 111 songs and having just 888MB left, I am a little shocked as I reckon I would be lucky to reach 200 songs. I understand that many of the songs are longer than 3 minutes etc but still the overall claimed space taken should at least be able to hold half of what it claims to hold.

I reliase many of these songs are longer and therefore take up more space but don't understand the cobblers about up to 640 track, presumably if each song was 2 mins each.

therefore any one know how long in mins 2.9mb is and
anyone had this experience. I feel a little bit conned to be honest
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Old 23-07-2007, 09:47
chrisjr
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What you are failing to take into account is the bit rate of the audio files you are uploading to the device. The number of songs you can upload to the player is determined by two factors...

The bitrate in kB/S
The duration of the songs

At 128kB/s an audio file occupies just under 1MB for every minute. So an average 3min track would occupy the 2.9MB claimed by Tesco. At that bit rate and song duration Tesco are quite correct to state that the device will store 640 tracks.

From what you are describing it sounds as if your mp3s are a much higher bit rate and so will be proportionatly larger. For example at 192kB/s each minute of audio occupies about 1.5Mb, at 256kB/s it is 2MB per minute.

So obviously if you increase the bit rate of the files you upload to it you require more space per file and consequently can store fewer files in total.

So no con involved. Though perhaps they could have indicated on the blurb that the figures were based on a 128kB/s bit rate and that higher bit rates mean fewer songs per player.
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Old 23-07-2007, 13:17
GlenL
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well having downloaded about 111 songs and having just 888MB left, I am a little shocked as I reckon I would be lucky to reach 200 songs. I
If you have downloaded 111 songs and it has taken up about 1Gb of your 1.8Gb of space leaving you with 888Mb free, surely that is roughly on target to store 200 songs on it ?
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Old 23-07-2007, 14:07
!!11oneone
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Also, when they talk about a memory capacity of 2Gb, what they actually mean is 2,000,000,000 bytes.

Since there are 1,048 bytes in a kb (not 1,000) this formats to less than 2Gb. This explains the 1.8Gb stated capacity on your PC.

2.9Mb per song would be about right for a 3 minute song encoded at 128kbps. You should allow around 1Mb per minute at this bit-rate, which is the minimum you should be using.

I reckon that 111 songs taking up 1Gb gives you almost 10Mb per track? Assuming they're a generous 5 mins each, this is still 2Mb per minute which suggests a pretty high bit-rate.

I don't know if you got them from the internet or your own CDs. If you made them yourself, change your encoder settings to 128kbps or 192kbps for smaller files.
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Old 23-07-2007, 19:58
DOS
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Did it say their in WMA format? Those are nearly half the size as mp3s at the same bitrate.

When I had a 256MB mp3 player, i had high quality music on my comp, then downloaded a WMA converter to put it into lower quality for the player.
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Old 23-07-2007, 20:24
Alvar Hanso
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well someone at work , just said that wma files can be converted to MP3 and thus compressed in file size, allowing that kinda figure, I'm sorry but most songs are a little longer than 3 mins.

otherwise it's going back, it was misleading
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Old 23-07-2007, 20:57
chrisjr
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Did it say their in WMA format? Those are nearly half the size as mp3s at the same bitrate..
Totally untrue.

A file that is 128kB/s will be exactly the same size for mp3 as it would be for WMA. That is the whole point about bitrates. They mean x thousand bits per second. A mp3 bit is exactly the same size as a WMA bit. Or whatever other format you care to use.
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Old 23-07-2007, 21:02
chrisjr
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well someone at work , just said that wma files can be converted to MP3 and thus compressed in file size, allowing that kinda figure, I'm sorry but most songs are a little longer than 3 mins.

otherwise it's going back, it was misleading
It was only misleading in that they perhaps could have been clearer about the assumptions that they were making.

IF you use 128kB/s to encode the tracks and the tracks average out at three minutes each then you can easily get 640 tracks on a 2GB device.

OK three minutes might be a little short - unless you are into pop music of the 1960s - so perhaps a more realistic assumption might have been 4 or 5 minutes per track.
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Old 24-07-2007, 19:12
Alvar Hanso
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but its assuming I knew in song time what 2.9MB size would cover. (that was in small print by the way on the back), for the layman is is stating rather proudly on the front up to 640 tracks. therefore one would expect it to be
2 GB rather than 1.8 GB when interfaced with the PC.

I am not a techaholic so therefore, if I read 2GB, I can just about fathom that, that is 2 gigabytes which to my mind,I thought christ, that is huge and look it can hold up to 640 tracks etc. they all must off come down in price as the market saturated with I pods etc.

it is going back tommorrow
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Old 24-07-2007, 19:35
Richard_T
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usualy somehwere hidden on the packaging theres something about Holds X number of tracks*
and then in small print theres usuly a * with something like "based on a three minute song encoded at 64kbs WMA with Windows media9" or something like that.

on my MP3 player it states 15,000 Songs*, tens of thousands of photos, 240 hours of video**
# then in the small print:
1GB=1,000,000 bytes, Available capacity will be less, song capacity based on a four minute song, encoded at 128kbs WMA.....

Regardless of what 2GB ( or greater) mp3 player you buy the advertised capacity will be less than the actual vailable capacity.
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Old 25-07-2007, 08:08
andybno1
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the claim isn't wrong really, u never get the full 2gigs of storage as with any hard drive theres always space taken up by spare clusters.

620 songs at 2.9mb in size comes to about 1.86gigs which is about right for 2gig mp3 player
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Old 25-07-2007, 12:28
[]tter\/\/ard
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They are all like that! If you go and buy another one, it will be the same!

The device has space on it for it to be able to run. Look on your PC, if you have a 60GB hard drive for example, you'll only have about 52GB available.
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Old 25-07-2007, 12:32
Nicol(in)a
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I always just assumed that the bit less was taken up bu the player's operating system or something... You learn something new evey day!
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Old 25-07-2007, 13:26
chrisjr
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The most likely explanaition for the discrepancy between what it says on the box and what Windows reports as the available size is how they define a gigabyte.

It is a common question over on the Computer forum. You go down PC World and buy a nice new hard drive that has 200GB plastered over it in big type. Plug it into your PC and Windows says it's "only" 186GB. So where have the other 14GB gone? Answer nowhere.

Disk manufacturers by and large define a gigabyte as 1000 to the power 3, ie 1,000,000,000 bytes. Windows however defines it as 1024 to the power 3, ie 1,073,741,824 bytes. 1024 being the closest power of 2 to 1000 - computers being binary of course work in base 2 not decimal like us humans. So if you multiply 1,073,741,824 by 186 you get pretty close to 200,000,000,000.

Same principle for the mp3 player. It's capacity on the box is most likely in 1G = 1,000,000,000. So a 2GB device translates to a fraction over 1.8G in Windows. There will be a few bytes lost for the file system overheads but nothing like the apparent 200MB that the raw figures might lead you to believe have been "lost".
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Old 27-07-2007, 22:54
Cornucopia
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As has been said, there is no con - all MP3/4 players will be the same. However, assuming that what you've bought is a straight no-brand MP3 player, you could have bought a 4GB no-brand MP4* player for not much more.

* MP4 is a device that plays music & video(**)

** Video is in AMV(***) format

*** AMV format will require conversion
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Old 27-07-2007, 23:27
Cornucopia
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This thread got me thinking... I get about 80 albums on 4Gb device using 128kbps WMA format. I've just ripped an album at 96kbps and it still sounds the same (perhaps it's my ears?) Even at 64kbps it doesn't sound bad (and it's half the size - well it would be, wouldn't it). 160 albums? Hmmm, sounds good.

So, what bitrates does everyone use for day-to-day playback on a portable device?

Also, if there were degradation due to the low bitrate, what would it sound like?
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Old 28-07-2007, 09:55
Phantom Flan Flinger
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This thread got me thinking... I get about 80 albums on 4Gb device using 128kbps WMA format. I've just ripped an album at 96kbps and it still sounds the same (perhaps it's my ears?) Even at 64kbps it doesn't sound bad (and it's half the size - well it would be, wouldn't it). 160 albums? Hmmm, sounds good.

So, what bitrates does everyone use for day-to-day playback on a portable device?

Also, if there were degradation due to the low bitrate, what would it sound like?
Everyone's ears are different. I'm like you as my ears don't pick up the differences in the bitrates.

As you've done, record the same track at 64,128 and 192. Listen to them and go for whatever you're happy with.
If it sounds OK to you at 64, then use it. Just means you'll get a load more songs on your player.

Dave.
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