The CD was introduced with great fanfare in 1982 and soon supplanted the audio cassette due to high quality digital sound. You could bring your portable cd player anywhere to listen to high quality audio music. The next revolution started with the acceptance of mp3 music. MP3 stands for Moving Pictures Expert Group 1 Audio Layer 3. This mp3 technology allows for the compression of normal CD audio file in WAV format and reduces the size of the file by a factor of 10 to 1. That means you can stored thousands of songs in a small portable player while previously a CD player could only hold a CD at a time.
Having a audio compression file format allows music to be easily distributed . Instead of having to go to the CD shop to buy your CD , you can now download from the internet the songs which you want. An MP3 player also offers skip free music while a CD player doesn't. Also, flash based memory mp3 players have no moving parts which enable longer lasting battery life not to mention less occurrence of break down or failure due to moving parts. Mp3 players also allow the ability to create play list of songs while cd players generally have limited capability in this arena. Finally, now there's no need to buy an entire music album. You can buy just one song instead of the whole album. It makes more sense since you may only like one particular song.
Does it mean that CD technology is a goner? Not necessarily, firstly although mp3 allows for huge numbers of songs to be stored a portable flash memory or hard disk player the sound quality is compromised. Of course we can't tell the difference because of mp3 removes information pertaining to frequencies which we are unable to hear. Remember the audio cassette technology which preceded the cd technology ?Well, it is still around. It still has uses and purposes.
CD player have advantages in that CD players are cheaper than
mp3 players. There is no need to buy storage media which is expensive. Songs in mp3 format have different sound volume levels while in a CD you get consistent sound volume. Why bother with the hassle of encoding, transferring and managing files which is troublesome, time consuming and more demanding when you can just simply pop in a new CD and get instant gratification. Also, if you travel to a less developed country , a CD player proves to be more useful as access to broadband is hard to find for downloading of your internet music. In addition, CD can last a life time and are virtually indestructible compared to a mp3 hard drive or flash memory players which have a limited life span and could spoil.
Lastly, you don't have to face headache of incompatibility issue as some players can play only specific file format.
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