Comparison mp3 player portable

You've just received a new MP3 player for your birthday. Now you face the time-consuming task of ripping your massive CD collection. For the time-constrained or just plain lazy, there's a better way, though—for a price. The Get Digital service provides next-day digital-encoding at prices that range from about $100 for 50 CDs to a little under $400 for 401 CDs—not cheap, but it can save you hours and get you up and running with little hassle.

The service is pretty straightforward. You fill out an online order form specifying your choice of encoding method (AAC, MP3, WAV, WMA, or other), the bit rate—which determines the quality of the conversion, in large part—and whether you want your files returned on DVD-R, DVD+R, CD-R media (for a comparison of the different formats, go to our Disc Inferno story) a hard drive, your MP3 player, or an MP3 jukebox. You can also have Get Digital resurface scratched CDs for $1 each. Ground shipping is included, but other methods add from $0.50 to $1.00 per CD, and overseas shipping is extra. After the company receives your order, it sends you a postage-paid FedEx label and two spindle cases that can each accommodate about 200 of your CDs.

We chose the standard FedEx ground shipping option and sent about 40 CDs containing a mixture of Maxi-singles and albums from major record companies and from independent labels. We also sent an internal EIDE hard drive for the company to load our files on. (Get Digital will transfer your files to any portable MP3 player, MP3 Jukebox, or hard drive for free.) Within a week, we had our DVD-R disc and hard drive as well as a custom printout of our collection.

The DVD-R we received was coded adequately, with correct volume leveling and no distortion. The disc was readable on almost all Windows platforms and Macintosh operating systems, but we encountered some minor problems when attempting to play the disc on a PC running Windows 2000. Though the hard drive was loaded properly and the computer played files from it with no trouble, we experienced a compatibility problem between one of our drives and some DVD-R discs. We discovered that the incompatibility occurred in machines that had both Windows 2000 and a Compaq DVD-ROM SD-612B drive. Machines with either that drive or Windows 2000 worked fine, but those with both wouldn't play many of the discs.

Overall, however, the Get Digital service does what it says. But although the cost per CD declines when you rip more discs, the price is still hefty. If you're looking to encode and load that new 40GB iPod, however, and don't have the time, Get Digital will do the job.

Copyright ?? 2003 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in PC Magazine.