Digital audio player
A digital audio player is a device that stores, organizes and plays digital music files. It is more commonly referred to as an
MP3 player , but DAPs often play many additional file formats. Some formats are proprietary, such as Windows Media Audio , and, to a degree, MP3. Some of these formats also may incorporate restrictive
digital rights management technology, such as WMA DRM, which are often part of certain paid download sites. Other formats are completely patent-free or otherwise open, such as
Ogg Vorbis,
FLAC, Speex , and Module file formats.
Encyclopedia
A
digital audio player is a device that stores, organizes and plays digital music files. It is more commonly referred to as an
MP3 player , but DAPs often play many additional file formats. Some formats are proprietary, such as Windows Media Audio , and, to a degree, MP3. Some of these formats also may incorporate restrictive
digital rights management technology, such as WMA DRM, which are often part of certain paid download sites. Other formats are completely patent-free or otherwise open, such as
Ogg Vorbis,
FLAC, Speex , and Module file formats.
There are three main types of digital audio players:
- MP3 CD Players - Devices that play CDs. Often, they can be used to play both audio CDs and homemade data CDs containing MP3 or other digital audio files. Some MP3 CD players have been criticized for ceasing the ability to read MP3 CDs prematurely but continue to read conventional CDs.
- Flash-based Players - These are solid state devices that hold digital audio files on internal or external media, such as memory card
- FISH Universal Transportable Memory Card Standard
...
s. Due to technological limitations, these are relatively low-storage devices, commercially ranging from 128MB to 8GB, which can often be extended with additional memory. As they are solid state and do not have moving parts, they are very resilient. In effect, they do not suffer limitations that owners of Hard Drive-based players face, such as fears of dropping their player or fragmentation. Such players are generally integrated into
USB keydrives. Within years, Flash-based media is expected to surpass the capacity of Hard Drive-based Players, and inevitably render them obsolete.
- Hard Drive-based Players or Digital Jukeboxes - Devices that read digital audio files from a hard drive. These players have higher capacities, ranging from 1.5GB to 100GB, depending on the hard drive technology. At typical encoding rates, this means that thousands of songs — perhaps an entire music collection — can be stored in one MP3 player. Due to their capacity and physical size, image and video media support is becoming standard among Hard Drive-based players. The Apple iPod and Creative Zen are examples of popular digital jukeboxes.
History
The precursors to DAPs were portable
CD players and
MiniDisc players . Non-mechanical DAPs were introduced following the popularity of the precursors.
The first non-mechanical digital audio player in the world was created by SaeHan Information Systems in 1997. The MPMan F10 was later OEMed to the American market through Eiger Labs.
The first non-mechanical digital audio player on the American market was the
Eiger Labs MPMan F10, a 32MB portable that appeared in the summer of 1998. It was a very basic unit and wasn't user expandable, though owners could upgrade the memory to 64MB by sending the player back to Eiger Labs with a check for $69 + $7.95 shipping.
The second DAP was the
Rio PMP300 from
Diamond Multimedia, introduced in September 1998. The Rio was a big success during the Christmas 1998 season as sales significantly exceeded expectations, spurring interest and investment in digital music. The
Recording Industry Association of America soon filed a lawsuit alleging that the device abetted illegal copying of music, but Diamond won a legal victory on the shoulders of
Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios and digital audio players were ruled legal devices.
Other early DAPs includes Sensory Science's Rave MP2100, the I-Jam IJ-100, and the Creative Labs Nomad. These portables were small and light, but only held enough memory to hold around 7 to 20 songs at normal 128 kbit/s compression rates. They also used slower parallel port connections to transfer files from PC to player, necessary as most PCs then used the Windows 95 and
NT operating systems, which did not support the then newer
USB connections well enough to be considered for use. When in the year 2000 USB became more common, most players adopted the USB standard, with a few isolated models supporting the
FireWire standard.
In August 1999 the first in-dash digital audio player appeared. The
Empeg Car offered players in several capacities ranging from 5GB to 28GB. The unit didn't catch on as SonicBLUE had hoped, however, and was discontinued in the autumn of 2001.
By the end of 1999,
Compaq made a significant improvement in DAPs' space limitations by using a laptop
hard drive for song storage rather than low-capacity
flash memory. The
Personal Jukebox , manufactured under license by HanGo Electronics, had 4.8GB of storage space, which held about 1200 songs , and was the beginning of what would be called the jukebox segment of digital audio players. This segment eventually became the dominant type of DAP.
In 2000,
iRiver released their first digital audio device.
The arrival of
Apple Computer's
iPod in 2001, combined with the
iTunes software that all but created the legal-music-download business, greatly expanded the market. Since then, a number of new digital audio players became available each promising to be an "iPod Killer".
In 2004,
Microsoft introduced their
Digital Rights Management technology under the
PlaysForSure brand. This technology allows consumers to rent music from subscription music services such as
Napster, Rhapsody, and Yahoo Music Unlimited and transfer it to their compatible digital audio players.
In 2006,
MSI developed and showcased the first solar powered player, the
MSI MEGA 540, at CeBIT in Hannover, Germany.
Equipment
Generally speaking, digital audio players are portable, employing internal or replaceable batteries and
headphones, although users often connect players to car and home stereos. Some DAPs also include
FM radio tuners and/or
microphones for voice recording. Many players can encode audio directly to MP3 or other digital audio formats directly from a line in audio signal.
Recently Flash digital audio players have even been incorporated into sunglasses, as demonstrated by the Oakley's "thump" model.
A number of manufacturers now produce Network MP3 players. These tend to be non-portable devices which have no storage of their own. Instead, they connect to a home
ethernet network, and receive a digital audio stream from some computer on the network. They are designed to connect to a home stereo, and are operated with a
remote control. Slim Devices, Roku, and cd3o each produce a Network MP3 device.
Modular
keydrive players are composed of two parts: the head and the body . They can be independently obtained and upgraded .
Usage/Usability
As digital audio players have spread, new uses have been found for them. This includes
podcasting, in which radio-like programs, or even TV-like video feeds, are automatically downloaded into the device to be played at the owner's convenience. Even a low-capacity digital audio player can store several hours of podcasts.
Audio acquisition
Most, if not all, digital audio players can play music that has been ripped from Compact Discs via
computer. In addition to ripped CD tracks, many digital audio players can accept downloaded music from
online music stores. However, such stores often use proprietary formats and
DRM, which means that the tracks can only be played on suitably licensed and restricted devices.
The main formats in use are WMA/
PlaysForSure from
Microsoft,
AAC/FairPlay from
Apple and
ATRAC from
Sony, all of which are mutually incompatible.
A huge amount of legal, freely downloadable Module file music is available on the Internet from sites such as The MOD Archive . Most MOD files are composed by individuals who allow them to be freely distributed, unlike MP3 files ripped from commercial CD tracks. While today's digital audio players generally do not support MOD files directly, progress is being made on that front with projects such as the TRAXMOD digital
audio player. For everyone else, it is possible to convert MOD music into MP3 format using software such as
Winamp.
Compared to compact discs
- higher data storage density and smaller physical size .
- skip free
- consumes less power
- even though they are more expensive than compact disc players, prices are expected to go down substantially during the next ten years. However, MP3 players are substantially cheaper than CD players with advanced error-correction and anti-shock features.
- more logical random shuffling
- more user-friendly song-selection interface
See also
- Internet radio device
- Audio player
- Portable media player
- Podcasting
External links
Comparison engines
- - Comprehensive search comparison engine for digital audio player reviews, specifications, price and pictures.
News and reviews
- - Up-to-date news, reviews, for digital audio players, pmp and anything related.
- - News and Reviews of iPod Alternatives
- - News, reviews, features and shootouts for digital audio players in Asia.
- - News, reviews, shopping guides for digital audio players
- - News, reviews, and community for Korean DAPs
- - Reviews, pros and cons for digital audio players
Other links
- resourcers for mp3 usb players
- Drivers that allow many MP3 players to connect to a Windows 98 PC via USB
- - Community focused on high-end headphones and audio players
- and - Richard Menta's two-part article covers the first digital audio players on the market with pictures of each player.
