>>>Amazing… compression technology or just another commercial competition craving?
>>>If this continues this way we will all end up saving & listening a million songs into/from a penny. What’s next?
>>>
>>>http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20040701/tc_nm/tech_sony_walkman_dc
>>
>>Why, indeed - the typical MP3 track takes about 4 MB; that would make for 5000 songs, not for 10,000 songs. Yech.
>
>I'm not aware of that technology. Compressing MP3? What about the sound quality? If the results are the same as compress on and on JPG files I would say, NO, thanks.
>Even MP3 format has lost a lot of quality comparing with MP2 but it was accepted as standard (not to mention Khz. Rate, etc.)

What I meant to say is that, since the typical MP3 track has about 4 MB. This was a rough estimate; if I check a directory which I have, with ca. 950 MP3 songs, I get an average of 3.55 MB per track. It is dishonest to make comparisons, based on a much smaller size.

You can get a smaller file in several ways:
1) Use very short songs - say, a minute each.
2) Reduce the quality (KHz rate, etc.), below the standard settings.
3) Use alternative compression formats. For instance, the Ogg Vorbis format is supposed to get a reduced size, at the same quality, compared with the MP3 format. (BTW, the other advantage of Ogg Vorbis over MP3 is that it is royalty-free.)

Using any of these non-standards methods for a claim that "x" songs fit on a particular device is dishonest, including the use of Ogg Vorbis, which is not yet in widespread use. Especially if any "special conditions" that have been applied, are not explicitly stated.

Unfortunately, we see this sort of dishonesty all the time. Screen widths are specified in diagonal (what a crazy idea - just to make it look bigger), hard disks are specified in GB, meaning 10^9 and NOT 1024^3 (which is the standard), etc.