The Classical music listeners out there are not your standard music listeners. They fit into an entirely different category. Being interested in pure sound quality, continuous play possibilities and simple but high quality music transfers is not the same as all these pop loving listeners.

There are a few key points to buying an MP3 player for classical music playback:

Headphones - These are very important, a bad set of headphones will destroy any music you listen to. You can buy the most expensive player in the world and lose all the benefit with a bad set of headphones. It is worth spending between 20 and 50 pounds on a good pair, we would recommend The Creative EP-630 (make sure you get the genuine ones), Sennheiser PX200, Sennheiser PMX70 or the Sony Fontopia headphones. These provide superior sound quality, enhanced boosting for required sound levels and good protection from external noise. CLICK HERE for headphones on Amazon

The Player -

Please remember that an MP4 (video) player, can also play MP3 music files. You will also find that due to the units being slightly bigger you do generally get much better sound quality and improved performance from them.

It is important to get a player that outputs good sound quality. It is pointless having a great set of headphones if the player itself does provide good quality sound. This is hard to find out before purchasing an item, but I would suggest a player with a 3.5mm headphone jack, rather than the smaller US 2.5mm jack.

Secondly the player should have a continuous playback or repeat function. You don't want the player to stop for 10 seconds between each song. This is particularly important for classical music as you will discover that when you copy the music from your CDs it will most likely be split into many tracks, despite being one long concerto when originally performed. To prevent having a time lag between songs ensure there is a continuous play mode, and that songs can be played in alphabetical/numerical order (the reason for this will be explained later on). A repeat all function maybe also be useful if you want to replay the entire collection once it has played through once.

Thirdly the player should have the basic drag and drop transfer option. While there are many apparently sophisticated music library tools such as itunes and Media player available, they are not the best companion for your classical music. This is because with Classical music it is important that it is played in order. As previously explained classical CDs are generally split into many tracks, despite only being one long piece originally. When using fancy software to copy your music to the player it can often lose the order of the tracks, thus when you go to play the complete piece you end up getting it in the wrong order.

This is where a simple drag and drop method of copying is useful. Once the music has been copied from the CD to the computer (we recommend CDEX for this) it should have a track number as the first part of the file name. This allows the player to recognize the order in which the tracks are supposed to be player. Programs such as iTunes and Media Player will rename the tracks before copying them to the player, which can result in the player not knowing the order in which to play them back. By simply copying the music from your "My Music" directory and pasting, or dragging and dropping it onto the portable mp3 player driver, you will retain the original filenames and thus order of playback.

ID3 tags are useful when playing music. An ID3 tag is basically a tag onto each track, which holds details such as the composer, title, track length, album, year of production etc. A player with ID3 tag support is very useful for organizing and selecting specific tracks whilst on the go. It is easy to find your tracks when you have a keyboard and mouse whilst on the computer, but when on the go you want to be able to find a specific track in a short amount of time. ID3 tags will help with this, especially for players which support a library function.

Battery life is another important consideration. You should be looking at between 15 and 25 hours playback on your mp3 player, obviously if you are using it for video as well it will be much shorter. Charging options is also something to consider, most just include a USB cable which you plug into your computer to charge the player. This is fine whilst you have access to a computer, but what about when you are away? You may want to choose a player with a mains charger included, or you can find USB chargers from Amazon at a very cheap price CLICK HERE