No part of the document may be used for commercial purposes nor incorporated into another body of work for any purpose without my explicit permission. Please respect my work by complying - thanks. INTRODUCTION This document describes my experiences configuring and using a Dell DJ MP3 player for field playback of bird songs in the course of my work. Topics covered include how I went about defining what I wanted, the compromises involved when I checked into what was on the market, the hardware and software that I ended up using, how I implemented the project and the practical aspects of field use. Even though your application, hardware and software may not be exactly the same as mine, the information contained here will hopefully help you to implement an MP3 solution that works for you. Original Requirements Life before MP3 with a myriad of portable tape players and (briefly) a portable CD player had given me plenty of insight into potential problems with field use of electronic playback equipment. First and foremost on my mind was robustness, the ability of the equipment to withstand the knocks it would undoubtedly receive -- I knew that I would be dropping the equipment on a regular basis. For this reason I decided that I wanted a solid state unit; i.e. one with a memory card rather than a hard disk The second most important aspect was ease of use in the field. I wanted to be able to quickly and easily access any bird song using just one hand. With a binocular, micro-recorder, often times a scope and sometimes a camera to carry, this is obviously an issue. Two main features were important here: (1) a large display that could be read easily in poor light and (2) an easy to use selection device. Secondary, but nevertheless important, issues that I considered were storage capacity...