If you are shopping for a new MP3 player for listening to spoken word in general, or especially old time radio shows, here are five tips that you should keep in mind. These tips might not be necessary if you are buying an MP3 player to listen just to music, but theyre a must if you are an old time radio fan.

1. Look for a player that has a good graphic equalizer feature.

A graphic equalizer lets you fine tune the sound that you hear, much more than just a bass button or a treble selector. Instead of just being able to adjust the bass (deep sounds) or the treble (high frequency sounds) you have much more control. Usually, there will be five or more sliders. The slider to the right will adjust the very high frequencies and the slider to the left will adjust the very low-level bass sounds. The three or more sliders in the middle will adjust various aspects of the midrange.

Imagine you were listening to an old time radio show that had a bit too much hiss. To get rid of this with a graphic equalizer all you would do as lower the slider on the right (thats the high frequency one) and youll notice the hiss either vanishes completely or is greatly reduced.

The great thing with graphic equalizers is that they really can improve the listening experience, which is particularly useful with old radio shows. Rather than just settle for poor sound quality you can actually do something about it if you have a good graphic equalizer.

2. Get a player that can act as a virtual hard drive

Many players (not the iPod Im afraid) will act as an additional hard drive when you plug them into your USB port. This is very convenient if you have many shows to copy over. All you need to do is copy the folders from your normal hard drive and then paste them straight onto your player. No need to mess around with third-party software such as iTunes or Windows Media Player. It makes it so quick and easy that you can copy hundreds of files in just a matter of minutes.

Regrettably, if you happen to love iPods, you need to use iTunes all the time. For some people this is fine, but for most people it is much quicker and easier just to quickly select files from one folder and paste them into another folder. If you choose your player right youll be able to do exactly that.

3. Make sure your player remembers where you are

Some players have a frustrating habit of returning you to the start of the file if you happen to switch the device off when youre halfway through listening to a show.

This is not good as it means that when you switch your MP3 player on next time, you will need to try finding the exact point that you were listening to.

Its also worth checking to see if the player you are thinking about getting has a bookmarking feature. Some MP3 players let you place a bookmark and you can then return to that point in the recording when you need. This is very useful if, for example, you want to break off listening to an old time radio show or audiobook and listen to some music for a while. If youve set a bookmark you can quickly return to the exact point you were at. This could be later the same day, a few days later or even many months later. Its a neat feature thats well worth having.

4. An auto-off feature

If you enjoy listening to old time radio shows in bed its well worth checking to make sure the player you are thinking about has an auto-off feature. Without such a feature it means the player will continue to play until the batteries run flat, which isnt ideal.

Some players have a sleep facility that lets you set a specific time, after which the player will turn itself off automatically. Others, such as the creative, offer a permanent auto-off feature that will turn the player off if no buttons are pressed for a set period of time. This can be very useful as it means that even if you forget to set the sleep-timer the player will turn itself off after an hour, or whatever length of time youve set for the auto-off timer.

5. Sufficient space for all your audio files

When buying a player its important to consider how much space you will need for files.

Its easy to think that the more space the better, but this isnt always the best way to approach the matter.

For example, theres no point getting a player with 60 gig of space if youre just going to use a couple GBs. Equally, its not wise to buy a player with only 1 gig of memory if youre planning on copying your whole old-time radio show collection onto it.

Personally, I prefer a smaller sized player, such as the Creative Zen Plus, with 8 gig of memory than a larger sized player, in physical terms, with 50+ gig on it. From experience I know that Im never going to fill more than 5 or 6 gig at any one time and so anything more would be a waste.

The easiest way to calculate how much space you need is to remember that a typical old time radio show is roughly seven megabytes and a typical music track is usually about five megabytes. So, on a 4 meg player youd be able to store roughly 570 old time radio shows (thats about 285 hours of listening) or 800 music tracks, which is about 80 full CDs. On an 8 meg player youd receive a double amount, which is more than sufficient for most people.

Another benefit of the smaller players is the storage tends to be solid-state, rather than a mini hard drive, which means theyre quite elastic and harder to damage if if you drop them by any chance.

I hope that these five tips will help you in your quest to get the right player for your needs. Whatever you do, don't get overwhelmed by the wide variety of players now available.

Just use these five tips and you'll be able to eliminate over seventy percent of them straight away, which will give you a much more manageable list to select from.