If you're thinking of buying an mp3 player, the vast range of them, and the varying functionality of each model can be a little confusing if you've never bought one before. One of the main things to look at when you're thinking of buying one of these devices is the storage space. I'm sure that, if you're reading this article, you already know that these days most MP3 players' storage is listed in gigabytes (or commonly GB). But what does this really mean?

Well, this all depends on what “bitrate” was originally used to encode the file. MP3 files are digitally compressed audio files. This means that they're not an exact representation of the original audio; they're actually a algorithmic representation of the audio, and contain enough data to reasonably accurately recover and play back the audio. This means that the lower the bitrate when the file is being compressed, the smaller the file will be. However, in the same respect, the lower the bitrate, the poorer the quality will also be. So it's really a trade-off between size and quality.

There are a few main bitrates that most MP3 files will be encoded at these days.

Starting with the lowest bitrate I'd recommend you use: 128 kbps. If you're simply listening through earphones, this bitrate should suit you fine. However, any lower than this and the quality will usually become noticeably poor. With this bitrate, 1 gigabyte of space will hold about 17 hours of music. So if you bought a brand new 32 GB iPod (for example), using this bitrate, you could fit an amazing 544 hours of music on it!

Although suitable for earphones, sometime 128 kbps just won't cut it. This is especially true if you're playing your music through mp3 speakers. In this case you should try either:

256 kbps: In 1 GB you'll fit approximately 9 hours of music.

320 kbps: In my experience, this is the highest bitrate you'll ever really need to use. You'll still be able to fit 7 hours of music on the MP3 player.