Amount of Storage Space in Player Smaller Than Expected
Keywords / Key Phrases: smaller storage space, memory space, memory capacity

The number of songs that a player claims it can store is based on a 4 minute WMA song encoded at 64 kbps (kilo bits per second). Commercially available music files are often encoded at 128 kpbs or higher. Music files encoded at higher bitrate are much larger than music files encoded at lower bitrate, thus it reduces the number of songs a player can store.

In addition, portions of the storage space are reserved and used by the player's firmware and instruction set, which further reduces the usable storage capacity.

There is also a difference in the formula used by storage media manufacturers and operating systems in calculating storage sizes. Storage media manufacturers use 1000 bytes per kilobyte, whereas operating systems use 1024 bytes per kilobyte. Consequently, the storage capacity published by the manufacturer is always higher than the actual storage space recognized by PC operating systems, or portable players.

The following is a comparison of storage capacity reported by manufacturers and by a computer system or an MP3 player.