mp3 storage and file compression

maradona10

not sure which forum to post this.

i have a little over 5gb of music on my shareaza program.

does that mean i need about 6gb storage on an mp3 player to hold them or can i compress the files when downloading them and buy a smaller mp3

aidan_walsh

MP3 files are already compressed. The only option you really have to make them any smaller would be to sacrifice sound quality and re-encode them at a lower bitrate.

maradona10

thanks for your reply but Aidan can you explain this to me please

my shareaza program has 1151 files using 5.01gb of space yet a 2gb creative muvo can hold 2000 songs

ethernet

maradona10 wrote: »

thanks for your reply but Aidan can you explain this to me please

my shareaza program has 1151 files using 5.01gb of space yet a 2gb creative muvo can hold 2000 songs

When you 'rip' a CD into the MP3 format, you throw away detail in the recording. This is what saves the space. Some people want less detail taken out of their music. What determines how much data is kept is the bit rate. 128 kbps is the least that should be used. This will give small files but fairly poor quality. Don't take the manufacturer's estimation at how many songs any player can hold as it rarely applies to your case -- surely all your songs aren't 3 minutes long, encoded at the same bit rate, etc.

maradona10

thanks ethernet for clearing that up