Real Advice On How To Use And Get The Most Out Of Your MP3 Player

Portable MP3 players are a truly wonderful invention. While on the go - just about anywhere - you can relax to your favorite artists, discover classic books you meant to read with audiobooks, watch movies and TV shows, download podcasts, and catch up on the latest news on FM radio. In addition, with certain MP3 players like the Sansa® Fuze™ and Sansa® Express™, you can record grocery lists and make memos for instant playback.

But, best of all, you get smooth, clear, skip-free audio all the time, whether you're jogging, biking, walking the dog or on the bus.

Organizing what's on your MP3 player is as important as the audio quality, storage capabilities, headphones and other cool features.

It's easy to download the latest songs and videos from RIAA approved sites such as AudioCandy, RealNetwork's Rhapsody, Sam Goody, and Pro-Music among others. You can also convert your purchased CDs and albums into digital audio to play on your MP3 player - for your own personal use. But you also have to be able to find and manage what you have stored on your player!

A great way to manage and organize your media is with Jukebox programs. These software programs help you develop play lists, synchronize music to you MP3 player, convert MP3 files to different formats, search album art, tag music and record CDs. Two of the best free Jukebox programs are Media Monkey and J.River Media Center.

Media Monkey lets you among other things:
• Organize and edit tags in your audio library with a powerful, easy-to-use interface
• Automatically lookup and tag Album Art and other metadata
• Manage 50,000+ files in your music collection without bogging down
• Play MP3s and other audio formats, and never again worry about varying volume
• Record CDs into OGG, MP3, FLAC and WMA files
• Convert MP3s, M4A, OGG, FLAC and WMA files into other formats
• Create playlists and music mixes quickly and easily to suit any occasion
• Synchronize with iPods / MP3 players effortlessly and convert tracks on-the-fly

J.River Media Center offers a wide variety of features and gives you the ability to:
• Organize all your media including music, videos and photos.
• Connect your PC to your home entertainment hardware and control it all with a remote
• Load your music on your MP3 player while you watch TV
• Customizable the screen and view your media on a monitor or TV from across the room.
• Type is enlarged and navigation is simplified for easy use with a remote device
• Synchronize your library with your MP3 player

Converting your favorite CDs into MP3 files is a snap with a variety of Rippers and Converter software programs.

Remember, legally you can only rip CDs that you have purchased and only for your own personal use. You cannot share these MP3 files with anyone else. Some examples of Converter and Ripper software programs are:

• Piston's Direct Audio Converter and CD Ripper is real must-have software for people who cannot imagine their life without digital music – people like you. It combines powerful audio converter and handy CD ripper in one useful program. You can choose the tracks you want to rip, select where to put the ripped files, choose the digital format and off you go.

• Download 3K offers a variety of rippers and converters including MP3Producer2.59. With MP3Producer you can easily grab your audio CD collection to a variety of compressed audio formats such as MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG with excellent quality at a high ripping speed.

• Switch Audio File Conversion software converts and encodes a range of audio file formats and works with both Windows and Mac.

Creating and mixing your own tracks is easy and fun with Audio Editor software programs

Some basic audio editors can be found online for free but most professional quality programs must be purchased. In many cases, you can download a free trial version to see if you like it, before purchasing. Some examples of these include:

• Easy Audio Editor is an easy-to-use program designed for home users. This multifunctional software provides a great graphical user interface that allows you to create, record, and play audio files, apply various audio effects like filtering, adjusting stereo channels, rip audio from audio CD, extract audio from video files, convert text to speech, edit audio file information and more. It works with all major audio and video formats.

• Audio Editor Gold is another visual audio editing and recording software program. You can use this program to record your own music, voice, or other audio files, edit it, mix it with other audio or musical parts, add effects like reverb, chorus, and echo, and burn it on a CD, post it on the World Wide Web or e-mail it.

• WavePad Sound Editor is a full-featured professional sound editor for Windows or Mac. It lets you make and edit music, voice and other audio recordings. When editing audio files you can cut, copy and paste parts of recordings and, if required, add effects like echo, amplification and noise reduction.

Now that you know how use and get the most out of your MP3 player – what are you waiting for? Go out there and enjoy!