MP3 changed the music. By reducing the size of music files without sacrificing too much sound quality, MP3 meant we could take our entire music collection with us or instantly stream it from the cloud.
Almost all of today's portable music players are MP3 players, but they probably won't play MP3s.
This is because audio technology continues to improve. Modern audio formats and services can deliver sound so good that it surpasses even CD quality, the kind of sound that gives you goosebumps.
So what is the difference between a portable music player and an MP3 player? Let's find out.
More than just MP3
MP3's job is to reduce the size of audio files, and it does this by analyzing the music and deciding which tracks to scrap, hopefully in a way that you may not realize.
This is called "lossy compression" because it involves reducing the amount of musical information in the file. The smaller the file, the less music information it contains, but the faster you can download it and the less space it takes up on your device.
This was important in the early 2000s, because our Internet connections were slow, the mobile Internet was useless, and our devices had limited storage; even the mighty iPod was only 5GB when it launched. So for many people, most people, the advantages of MP3 outweigh the disadvantages of lower sound quality.
This is still the case for some online streaming services today, which is why, for example, the standard Spotify service streams music in MP3 format because it is good enough for many listeners.
But Spotify also offers lossless audio, just like Apple Music and many other services, and the lossless format is also the format of choice for portable audio players today.
Cut your losses
As the name suggests, lossless audio means that the information in the original music is not altered, so if the original was CD quality, the lossless version is CD quality as well.
The files are much larger than better quality MP3s, but they are significantly better, and with today's fast internet, fast mobile data, and large storage capacities, file size doesn't matter.
Lossless audio essentially takes the original CD-quality file and uses a more efficient file format to stream it.
Some streaming services and many portable audio players go one step further, with support for Hi-Res Audio. This offers even better quality than CD.
Without being too technical, the quality of the CD is not the same as the original - it scans the original 44.100 times per second to create a digital version that sounds as close to the original as possible. But you can sample even faster, and you can record more information on each sample.
If you do this, you get a higher resolution file that is much closer to the original performance or recording - so instead of 44,100 sixteen-bit samples per second, you could have 96,000 24-bit samples. You won't notice the difference with inexpensive headphones, but if you have high-end headphones or speakers, the difference is staggering.
Different vendors offer different versions of Hi-Res Audio, but they all have one thing in common: they are lossless audio files with sample rates higher than CD quality.
How to choose a portable audio or MP3 player
We mentioned earlier that almost all music players are MP3 compatible. But there are other formats that you should also know, especially when buying material.
In addition to MP3, there is AAC, a slightly more efficient form of lossy compression, and then there are the higher resolution formats: WAV and AIFF (CD quality) and FLAC / ALAC for higher resolutions.
If you want to buy a portable player with Hi-Res music capability, look for these newer formats: FLAC is the most popular and ALAC is just Apple's version.
You can also find DSD, which is the format used by Super Audio CD, and MQA, which is Tidal's preferred format for high-resolution audio.
LaComparacion created this content as part of a paid partnership with Huawei. The content of this article is completely independent and reflects solely the editorial opinion of LaComparacion.