Portable Sound Players

Nowadays, everyone wants to have music with them, and no one is surprised now seeing portable players, because almost everyone has it.

Players have two primary categories:  hard-drive-based and flash-based.

Main merit of HDD-based player is big capacity. They're usually build about 1,8 inch hard drives, so players have even 160Gb space. Frequently, their price is similar to flash players with smaller capacity (for example, iPod nano 16Gb - 169$, iPod Classic 160Gb - 235$). HDD-based players unfortunately have demerits. Above all we must be carefull, because we can easily damage hard disk, for example - while we running. These players is also bigger, just because they have greater battery. In the other hand, players can hold even about 30,000 songs! Often they have much more functions too, like picture viewer or movie player.

Flash-based players don't have moving parts, so you can safely play some sports. They're mostly cheaper than HDD-based and battery can hold more energy (even 60 hours of still playing). We can define many types of portable players.

First type is small players for music only so-called DAP (Digital Audio Player). They have small display (or none). DAPs haven't many functions, basically music players. They're perfect for playing sports, running or something.

Next category are players, who have bigger screen (about 2,5 inches). They're also build for music, but we can play some movie, but often it's not comfortable. This size is quite universal, they're not too big, so you can easily put them in pocket.

Third - players with display around 3,5 inches so-called PMP (Portable Media Player). Here music is important in the same way as movies or photos. PMPs have many functions and big size screens, so they are perfect for traveling to, for example watch some movie or play a game. Now, almost each PMP has touch screen. It ensure a lot of aplications, for example, we can use fingers to paint or type something.

There is one more primary type of players - it's also PMP with display size above 3,5". It's also called MID (Mobile Internet Device), because many of them have Wi-Fi function, so you can find a hotspot and surf on the internet for free. Some of these devices have also GPS module or TV receiver. Also, most of them have operating system. Unfortunately, we must remember, that many functions comes in pair with large price.

For good player you must buy good earphones. I think, that the best combination is warm-sound (more down frequency – bass etc.) player with cold-sound (more high frequency – e.g. percussion) earphones. These features is complementary to each other and generate real good synergy set.

I choose flash-based small iPod Nano 1st generation. It's really tiny and sound pretty well. My headphones is not quite portable, but I'm very satisfied of them – Panasonic HTX7.

So what is your combination of portable sound system and what is your opinion about that?