Richard, I think you are going to have a lot of trouble trying to do what you want to do with an mp3 player. By eschewing a smartphone or table you are really hamstringing yourself. There are multiple Bible smart apps today that run on a Smartphone that can easily do what you want - find stuff out of indexing, repeat sentences, etc. And, because most people recognize this, this is where the vast majority of attention on Bible studying has gone. Very few are using mp3 players because such players are optimized for playing a stream of music.
As for Bible study itself, KJV is fine as long as you understand that it's just a translation of translations and isn't the best. Since the 1600's when it was written we have discovered far earlier and more accurate texts and there's now bibles like New American Standard Bible which are more accurate to the earlier texts. Interestingly, there's nowhere any directive I can find in the Bible by God and Jesus to his followers to actually write a document like The Bible. The directive is to spread the word but I'd argue the LAST thing the Lord ever wanted was someone to write down the word as a concrete set of words on a page in a book then claim God said that exact thing, because that allows evil people to claim they have the best understanding of the word - and takes the entire focus away from the ideas. You can say the IDEA of "turning the other cheek" dozens of different ways in dozens of different sentences that gets the idea across in a way that the recipient is completely clear what you meant - but you write it down one way then people spend years fighting over what the written word means, completely ignoring the actual idea. I think to God the IDEA is far more important than arguments over the best way to write it. And it's also well known Jesus never wrote anything down either and used the back-and-forth of speech and question and answer to teach - not thumping away on a bunch of papyrus using sound bites. While there's a place for writing in teaching, the act of teaching is person-to-person, not person-to-printed-to-person. Anyway, an interesting playlist on development of what we call the Bible today is here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeLDw8KQgqi6v_s-HXosnAXhOyQ26wDPS As you can see, this is something fairly easy to digest on a smartphone - not so much on an MP3. There are youtube downloaders out there you can capture this stuff then review it at leisure on a device not internet-connected. Ted -----Original Message----- From: PLUG <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Richard Owlett Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2026 11:14 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [PLUG] Articles on MP3 player usability? On 1/14/26 11:37 AM, Tomas Kuchta wrote: > I believe that you answered the question of data storage size yourself But that has almost *NOTHING* to do with my question. ROFL ;{ > > mp3 files do not compress well. Resulting in .zip files typically > bigger than their content. > > So, if you need to cary around 20 1.2GB bible stories - 32GB mp3 > player device should work just fine. > > As for the usability, I would try to select a device which presents > itself as USB mas-storage when connected through USB - so that you can > easily manage the fules on the device. > > Hope that helps, I does NOT. I was looking for articles on actually using an MP3 player in my environment. E.G. 1. How convenient is it to choose which of 1189 chapters spread among 66 books of KJV Bible to hear? 2. When listening to a commentary, how easy is it to go back a few sentences or minutes to clarify the meaning of something. TIA > Tomas > > On Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 10:49 Richard Owlett <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I'm an tri-focal wearing octogenarian with some auditory issues. >> I wish to listen conveniently to the KJV Bible and/or commentaries. >> A suitable Bible in MP3 format whose zipped format is ~1.2 GB with >> reading time of 85 hours. The commentaries of interest would likely >> be >> ~10 hours per set. >> >> Smartphones are *NOT* a possibility. >> >> I'm looking for the functionality of a 60's era pocket cassette player. >> I have never seen an MP3 player (friends all tote smartphones). >> Ads on web are useless. All the MP3 player articles I found were >> focused on tech behind the MP3 format and various descriptions of >> fidelity versus bit rate (was an analog focused E.E. student a >> half-century ago ;) >> >> Suggested articles dealing with usability issues? >> Can I at least have the Bible and commentaries in different directories? >> How much can be stored on the device itself (had assumed flash drives >> would be needed)? >> TIA >> >> >
