Music on the move: up with the players

By STEVE HART

A colleague tells me that skating while listening to music pumped into the ears from a personal hi-fi is passe. "It's very 80s," she says. "Relax," I say.

It's okay in California, apparently, where the young, free and slim skate around with gay abandon, listening to their music.

Pedestrians don't hear them approaching from behind by the sound of their rollerboots (they're not called skates any more, says my son) - it's the hissing sound emanating from near-invisible headphones that tips off the unwary.

On packed London Underground trains I remember that hissing being dealt with by dear old ladies with nail scissors.

As the train stood silently between stations, the sound of a personal hi-fi sometimes became too much and a passenger would snip the headphone cable. Silence and bewilderment followed.



The Sony Walkman tape player was my entry into enjoying music on the move. But if I walked too fast the sound went funny. The player worked well only while I was sitting down (which I excel at) or walking gracefully.

Today, the options for taking music with you are plentiful and you can pay anything from around $30 to more than $1000.

Robust personal cassette players can be picked up for the price of a top 40 CD. Alternatively, you can take your choice of digital devices that play music from a variety of sources - CDs, mini-discs, memory cards and a relative newcomer, the hard drive player.

Ted Gibbons, deputy editor of Tone magazine, enthuses over the 20GB hard drive machine.

Yes, it's heavy to carry around; yes, the batteries can have a shorter life than those of its counterparts; yes, the hard drive could be damaged if handled carelessly. But it can hold thousands of songs.

"You need never listen to the same song twice while on holiday and the audio quality is excellent," he says.

"And the beauty of digital technology lets you copy music from your CDs and leave the precious silver disks safe at home."

But it costs around $1000 - more than the second-hand value of the average CD collection.

For ease of use, a standard portable CD player probably offers the best all-round value. They start at around $200, and all you need do is pop in a conventional disk and away you go. You may, however, lose the option of tailoring the music to your personal choice, unless you can create your own CD compilations.

And what about that skipping problem, when a player is jolted by movement - such as rollerskating in California - and the music misses a beat?

"It's not an issue any more," says Gibbons. "All players of digital equipment don't suffer the problem. There are MP3 players that use memory cards to store music and which have no moving parts, or they have memory buffers which compensate for skipping.

"The buffers store up to a minute of music which means the machine can be shaken continuously for the length of the buffer and no difference in sound will be heard. All CD players have this technology, but the buffer time varies from machine to machine."

The mini-disc is basically a reduced version of the CD, but with one major difference - you can record music to it (like a cassette tape), shuffle tracks around, remove tracks and record new ones.

"Some people say it's a technology looking for a problem, but it's versatile and the sound reproduction is very good, almost indistinguishable from a CD," says Gibbons.

The discs are sealed in a case, preventing the surface from being scratched (unlike a CD). They are light, and each disc can store hundreds of songs.

You can record music direct from your home hi-fi or transfer digital sound files, such as MP3s, from your computer to a mini-disc. They start at around $500.

If you don't want to mess about carrying discs at all, then an MP3 player is the answer.

These gadgets store sound on a memory card. They can't be used without a computer to transfer files to and fro, and a level of technical dedication and know-how is required.

Before each sound file can be copied to a sound card, the song needs to be converted to the MP3 format using a computer program.

MP3 is a compression technology which reduces each sound file to about a tenth of its original size.

"MP3 quality is questionable," says Gibbons. "Their sound can get on your nerves, there's no body and the low and high frequencies can get lost because of the high compression. When a 40MB sound file - the average size of a four-minute song - is reduced to 4MB, something has to give.

"But they are ideal for those who download MP3 tracks from the internet."

Gibbons believes that in the future music will be sold on memory cards not much bigger than a thumbnail. But that's the future. What does he recommend for today?

"It's impossible to recommend any one player because they come and go so quickly. I use a personal radio myself [which can be picked up for around $80]. They are light and I can flick around the stations at will - it's a no-worries option.

"But if I wanted to listen to my music I would choose a CD player. Batteries last well and they use standard CDs.

"My other recommendation would be to chuck away the headphones you get with a portable player and invest in a good pair - they really will improve the sound quality.

"And don't let price sway you. I have listened to some high-priced players that sound terrible, and found players at the cheaper end of the market that sound great. Listen before you buy."

Tone