Portable Audio

[Shelly59]

Not sure which way to go on storing of old CD music and putting on new songs. We are a small Church with limited piano players and use CDs for the Sunday School kids singing and worship.  What would be your recommendations?? MP3 or I POD?? Speakers?? We do have occassional singing for Church so would like something mobil.  Budget of $400. Right now just use small portable CD player.

[bobberuchi]

I would suggest MP3 as iTunes tends to be finicky about transferring music.

What I have done is to take all my music CD's and Rip them to digital format.

There are various qualities of conversion.  MP3 is middle of the road.  There is an option for "Loss Less" as it is called that will transfer the quality of the CD.  However, it takes up a lot more space.  But if your only talking a few dozen CD's that should not be to much.

iPods are really good, however you pay the premium for the name brand.

You can save your digital music to a USB jump drive as a back up.

As far as playback you should go into the store and ask the associate to give you demonstrations of what they have on hand.  

I think you will be impressed with the sound quality of the Bose SoundDock systems.  Right now at $250

If you have an iPhone or an Android or a player put some of your music on them and bring them with.

Another product to consider would be the Bose SoundTouch 20 Series.  Currenlty $350.  Depending on the size of your Church, it is a system that can connect to other speakers if your church is set up with Wi-Fi.  You can ad on the extra speakers as you can afford them.

I would recommond going in and taking a look and then checking out the ads later this week.