What is MP3?:

MP3 is one of the most widely recognized formats for storing music on the Net, on your PC and portable devices.

MP3 is short for 'MPEG-1, Audio Layer 3'. The 'MPEG' part refers to the 'Motion Picture Experts Group', who created the format, which is now in its third incarnation.

The hype about MP3 is all about the way that it compresses large music files without a major difference to the quality of the sound (up to 12:1). Major record companies are starting to enable customers to burn their own CDs from music files downloaded from the Internet in MP3 format.

You can compress the size of a track from a normal CD from around 16mb to 3mb. To create an MP3 file from one of your own CD tracks, first insert the CD into your CD-Rom drive on your PC. If you're connected to the net at the time, your music player will probably go to http://www.ccdb.comand.com automatically display the track names from the CD for you.

You select the track you wish to compress and convert to MP3, and use a music player like Music Match JukeBox to click 'Record'. The song will be saved to 'My Library'.

Once you've either created your own MP3 files or downloaded others from the Net, you can transfer them to portable devices, called portable MP3 players.

Most players have great instructions that come with them, but its basically as simple as connecting the device to your PC via a USB port, launching the software that comes with the player and moving songs from your PC to the player.

There are some great devices out there, and some that also play normal CD's. The devices shown on the show are available at Harvey Norman www.harveynorman.com.au.

The following MP3/CD players are available at www.mp3.com.au/shop