m3po
13
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What is the m3po and what can it do?
Your new m3po-Player is very similar to a standard CD player. However, there are a number of
differences, as the m3po is fundamentally more versatile and more powerful. Don’t worry, this
does not make it any more complicated.
The m3po is capable of playing standard (Audio) CDs. The operation is akin to a CD player:
Insert CD, chose title, press PLAY. In addition to this, it can read and play MP3 data. These can
be located on a CD-ROM, or an optional hard disk. The m3po cannot record.
Why MP3?
MP3 is currently the most common format for music on the Internet. Its main advantage is the
small size of its audio files, as described in the following example: If you record a standard
audio CD on your home PC, then this will use about 650 Megabyte (MB) of hard disk space.
Converting this into MP3 files, you are presented with only 1/11 of its original size, roughly
60MB. If the files contain nothing but speech (i.e. language courses), the size of the file can be
reduced to 1/25 of its original size, without losing too much of its sound quality. This is quite
useful, as you can see:
CD-Audio
MP3 128kBit/s
MP3 56kBit/s
11:1
1:1
25:1
You will find more information on MP3 in the chapter "Useful informa-
tion on MP3" on page 46.
You can burn your MP3 files onto CD-R in your computer and it is exactly this feature which
distinguishes the m3po from other MP3 players: The CD is much more efficient and cheaper
than conventional MP3 players, which use flash ROM chips to store data.
