I listen only to classical music, so my mini-disc player will require two to three discs to hold a complete opera, for example, to say nothing of the 'Ring'. I gather from your column that the new Rio will hold about 12 hours of music. That will suit me.
Is it true that it has no moving parts? If so, it should be good for use while on the move. Are there 'commercial' and/ or 'grey' sites on the Internet where people put out classical music for downloading? Is it possible to convert my own CD collection of music into MP3 files to make it even more portable than the CD Walkman or the MD Walkman? I don't mind trading off some high fidelity for size reduction and no moving parts.
If it can be done, how would I go about it? Would it be done by taking the output through the digital output of my CD player? Or do I require codec software available as freeware or shareware from sites such as Winfiles.com? C. K. WONG Hong Kong The new Rio player, like its brother, will work without moving parts. Data is stored on solid-state media - or memory modules.
Despite the increase in storage capacity, I wouldn't be surprised if the quality of sound storable on the new player would be better than that on the existing model, which isn't bad anyway.
Programs such as MusicMatch Jukebox 4.10, AudioCatalyst 2.0, Virtuosa Gold 3.1, HyCD Play&Record and Real Jukebox are all highly regarded programs that you can read up on and download.
Most are available free with limited functionality from this site. For example, with MusicMatch Jukebox 4.10, you can convert sound into MP3 format in 'near-CD-quality' format with the freeware version and pay US$29.99 to upgrade to a version that will let you convert to full-CD-quality MP3 sound.