In the modern days, most people use digital audio players instead of a traditional CD Player. Digital audio players are better devices in terms of storage and reliability compared to CD players. Even the ones that claim it's "Skip Free", it does not entirely prevent skips, but does help reduce skips on CD's.

1. Choose a digital player that suits your budget.

There are lots of digital audio players out there that have different price ranges. Usually the generic versions of MP3 players are a bargain if you don't plan to spend $50 or more. But if you want quality instead of savings, go search on the Creative Lab digital audio players. They have great sound quality and they have been making MP3 players before Apple debuted their iPods. Many headphones can't pickup any white noise generated from these players

There is also an alternative for some people who want Internet access on their digital audio player. Their alternative is buying a Palm PDA, Windows Mobile PDA/Smartphone or a cellular phone with music capabilities. Although most of these produce great sound quality, but bear in mind that most of these devices aren't designed for solely playing audio; They are mainly portable communication devices so sound quality may be lower than expected. There may be a substantial amount of white noise generated by some Smartphones or PDAs with poorly implemented hardware, not software.

2. Choose the largest capacity or memory card you can afford.

If you plan to spend $10 dollars or less, you can find high quality digital audio players on eBay that have a capacity of up to 512MB. If you want to spend about more than $25 dollars, you can might as well look for players in the 1GB range. If you are going to say, I'll buy the player that has the largest capicity, then start looking for hard drive based players. Many of them boast in the $100 range with decent amount of storage.

For unlimited capacity, your best choice is a PDA or a Smartphone. They can be loaded with unlimited stacks of memory cards (SDHC or CompactFlash), so long you have the budget to purchase the memory cards. SD cards are relatively inexpensive, but if your player uses CF or Memory Stick, expect to shell some extra money for the memory cards.

3. See how many formats your selected digital audio player can play.

Most digital audio players out there can play MP3 files, WMA and WAV, but again some players can play other formats like the protected version of WMA (Also known as WMA-DRM). Always look for a player that can play the most number of formats. Most mainstream digital audio players and all Windows Mobile 5 or 6 devices that can play WMA-DRM will usually bear a PlaysForSure logo from Microsoft. An example of the PlaysForSure logo is shown below:



When your digital audio player bears this logo, you can play music downloaded from most online-download services out on the Internet. Unfortunately, songs downloaded from Apple's iTunes music store will not play on these playsforsure players. The songs are in AAC format which is a proprietary format based on MPEG-4.

Smartphones and PDAs can virtually play an unlimited amount of formats as long as there is the software existent for it. The reason is that the digital audio file is decoded by the software on the device, not on a special purpose microchip. There is also a downside to it: Software decoding means that the processor in the PDA or Smartphone will have to work hard and therefore will drain the battery faster than expected. Most newer PDAs or Smartphones already feature native MP3 or WMA decoding in the processor. An example of a device that utilizes native decoding is the HP iPAQ 210 Enterprise Handheld.

4. Flash or Hard Drive based?

Usually, you would select a Flash Based digital audio player if you intend to take it out for a jog and listen to it. Hard Drive based digital audio players are well suited for people who does care about the device and knows the risk about Hard Drives. I would personally recommend Flash Based digital audio players instead of Hard Drive based players because they are prone to failure because of the delicate nature of the hard drive.

5. Brands

Brands is usually not an issue for people who want to carry music with them. If you really want to go with the branding stuff, I would recommend Creative Labs. Creative's players are very good in quality and they have been making portable digital music players longer than Apple has been making their iPods. Also their sound resonance is very good compared in terms with iPods.

6. Check to see if you can upgrade your Player's Firmware

Most of the digital audio players out there are usually software upgradeable with a simple firmware update. Firmware updates are usually updates that add functionality to your digital audio player, fix issues regarding to your player or in some cases improving audio quality. Regularly check with your manufacturer of the player for these firmware updates.


7. Battery Life
Battery life is a major concern. If you have a cutting edge digital audio player, but ironically the battery only lasts for so long: You're in big trouble. Battery life figures stated by the manufacturer is inaccurate. It only gives you a rough estimate of how long it will last for and it does not include which type of file it is decoding. An estimated battery life of 8 hours is acceptable for most people.

Most digital audio players sold have an internal rechargeable battery built in. This may be convenience for many people; but once the battery reaches to the point that it can not be recharged, the device will be rendered useless. An user replaceable battery may sound good news to the majority, but they are expensive to buy. User replaceable batteries have an advantage: They won't be rendered useless once the battery dies, they can be still used once a new battery is installed.