MP3 music is supposed to be the future of personal

hi-fi, or so the ads would have us believe. But there are major pitfalls awaiting the uninformed...

BELIEVE the hype and you must be wondering how it was possible to listen to your favourite music on the move before the advent of MP3.

This time last year Mini Disc was supposed to be the future of portable hi-fi. Now everyone is rushing to proclaim the advantages of MPEG Audio Layer III, or MP3 for short.

It's a method of storing and decoding music digitally on a device no larger than a box of matches.

The benefits appear to be obvious. MP3 portables are tiny solid state devices which can hook up to a PC and download your favourite music tracks.

Having no moving parts, the music won't skip or jump no matter how energetic your life-style - a far cry from even the very best portable CD players or cassette units which stutter and distort if you break into anything more than a brisk walk.

That's the theory, at least.

In reality many people will still be better off sticking with their trusty Walkman.

For starters the sound quality isn't really anywhere near CD standards. It's all a matter of storage. As an average music CD carries around 450MB of data and the average MP3 player has a 64MB capacity something has to give and, in the case of MP3, it's sound quality.

The only way to record CD audio data for use with an MP3 player is by discarding around 75 per cent of the original. The signal has to be vastly reduced to meet the constraints of the medium. MP3 recorders do this by analysing the signal. If two sounds have a similar frequency but one is much louder than the other, the louder sound is likely to mask the quieter one so an MP3 recorder will dispense with the lesser note.

All very well but any audiophile will instantly notice the difference.

Then there's the time it takes to convert an audio CD into the MP3 format.

Provided you have an MP3 recorder (or "ripper" as it's known in geek speak) it can take anything up to 15 minutes per track before it's downloaded onto a portable player. That's up to three hours per CD - enough to task the patience of even the most devoted digital music lover.

Legend has it that MP3 allows you virtual freedom to surf the Net downloading bootlegged albums at the click of a mouse.

Not even allowing for the recent get-tough policy many ISPs have adopted with bootleg music sites, this is patently silly.

Modern modem technology just isn't speedy enough. Even the fastest would take around two to three hours to download an entire album.

If you're so determined to rip off the music industry it's easier to buy an album, tape it, then take it back and exchange it for something else. Most of us would rather just fork out £15 for the CD of our choice.

And given the drawbacks of MP3 right now, that's the way it's going to be for sometime to come.