Sony uses a proprietary memory stick with its MP3 players, as well as its other portables. It's expensive and may not be a suitable solution unless you only purchase Sony portable devices. More formats are on the way, including DataPlay discs that will give PocketZips a run for their money, since they'll be similarly sized and priced, but will hold 250MB or 500MB apiece. And like PocketZips, DataPlay discs can hold any type of computer file, so compatible players can also double as micro-size portable hard drives. To get the most out of an MP3 player, you need to understand a little about MP3 files.
Music requires a lot of storage space.
The key concept to understand is that there is a tradeoff between the quality of the music and the size of the file. MP3 files can be created at various bit rates, a fancy term for the transmission speed of the data. The higher the bit rate, the bigger the file will be and the better it will sound. In testing, we've found that files encoded at a bit rate of 128 Kbps deliver CD-quality audio. Although it is by far the most prevalent, MP3 is just one of several competing formats for digital audio.