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Digital audio player

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Apple iPod, the most popular hard drive-based digital audio player
An embedded hard drive-based player (Creative Zen Vision:M), one of the many alternatives for the iPod
An MP3 CD player (Philips Expanium)
Some mobile phones can be used as digital audio players, such as the Nokia 6233.

A digital audio player (DAP) is a device that stores, organizes and plays digital music files. It is more commonly referred to as an MP3 player (because of the MP3 format's ubiquity), but DAPs often play many additional file formats. Some formats are proprietary, such as Windows Media Audio (WMA), and, to a degree, Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) and MP3. Some of these formats also may incorporate restrictive DRM technology, such as Janus and FairPlay, which are often part of certain paid download sites. Other formats are completely patent-free or otherwise open, such as Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Speex (all part of the Ogg open multimedia project), and Module file formats.

There are three main types of digital audio players:

  • Flash-based Players - These are solid state devices that hold digital audio files on internal or external media, such as memory cards. Due to technological limitations, these are relatively low-storage devices, commercially ranging from 128MB to 8GB, such as the 2nd generation iPod nano and the iriver clix, 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 commonly integrated into USB keydrives.
  • 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 160GB, 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. Because of the storage capacity, devices that also display video and pictures are often hard-drive based. The Apple iPod, Creative Zen and Microsoft Zune are examples of popular digital jukeboxes.
  • MP3 CD Players - Devices that play CDs. This includes both audio CDs and home-made data CDs containing MP3 or other digital audio files.

History

The precursors to DAPs were portable CD players and MiniDisc players (neither being generally considered a "digital audio player"). Non-mechanical DAPs were introduced following the popularity of the precursors.

The first digital audio player in the world was created by South Korean SaeHan Information Systems in 1997 (acquired by iRiver in 2004). The MPMan F10 was later OEMed to the American market through Eiger Labs.

The first non-mechanical unit 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 (but widely considered the first mass market player) 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 MP2300, 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.

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 (PJB-100), manufactured under license by HanGo Electronics, had 4.8GB of storage space, which held about 1200 songs (or 100 CDs, hence the name PJB-100), 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.

Also, at the end of 1999, the first in-dash digital audio player appeared. The Empeg Car (renamed the Rio Car after it was acquired by SonicBLUE and added to its Rio line of MP3 products) 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.

In 2000, iRiver released their first digital audio device.

The arrival of Apple Computer's iPod in 2001, combined with the opening of the iTunes Store in 2003 that created the legal music download business, greatly expanded the market. Since then, a large number of new digital audio players have been released, each promising to be an "iPod Killer".

In 2004, Microsoft introduced their Digital Rights Management (DRM) 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. Microsoft did not use PlaysForSure when it released its own Zune music player because of limitations over sharing music between devices [1] and in 2007 announced a new DRM technology to cover more file types than music and video.

In 2006, MSI developed and showcased the first solar powered player, the MSI MEGA 540, at CeBIT in Hanover, Germany.[2]

Equipment

Generally speaking, digital audio players are portable and use 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. Most have semi-permanent rechargeable batteries while others have conventional battery bays for disposable or rechargeable batteries.

Some players incorporate a dock connector that allows them to slot into accessories such as chargers, speakers, or car and home stereos. Such accessories are sold separately and are rarely packaged together with the DAP.

While early players tended to use flash memory, the development of tiny hard-disk drives of typically 10 to 40 Gbyte capacity made it possible to save entire music collections onto a digital audio player at reasonable cost. In 2006 the cost of external flash cards dropped sharply, largely because of the increasing popularity of the digital cameras, and this has made the use of external flash cards a more attractive option in music players. Such players allow different cards to be used for different groupings, such as classical or pop, with no limit to the size of the total collection. This concept also permits easy swapping of collections, but can lead to problems if the files are not saved in the same format. A few players, such as the SanDisk Sansa, will play files that have been dragged-and-dropped to the flash card on a personal computer, without the use of any special software, and will automatically cope with folders containing albums, displaying everything in terms of artist, track (song), or album. Others only play tracks, and get confused if these are placed in folders, and may even require special software to be used to format the card. As flash memory prices continue to drop, some commentators expect flash to take over from hard disk drives altogether. Currently, the microSD flash card, a tiny version of the Secure Digital (SD)card commonly found personal computer users, is being aimed at portable players and mobile phones, with a maximum capacity of around 4GByte. Micro-SD flash is readily converted into an SD size card (for use with a PC) by inserting it into an adapter shell. The use of external flash cards makes it possible in principle to move collections of music between personal players, portable players with speakers, home audio systems, and car players, though in practice car and home players that will handle MP3 files and folders properly, with tracks, albums and playlists selectable, are hard to find.

Flash digital audio players have even been incorporated into sunglasses, as demonstrated by the Oakley's "thump" model in 2004.

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 flash players are composed of two detachable parts: the head (or reader/writer) and the body (the memory). They can be independently obtained and upgraded (one can change the head or the body; i.e. to add more memory).

A new type of digital audio player has emerged as a result of satellite radio companies' push into popular markets in the North America (XM Radio [1] and Sirius). These devices [2] are linked to the paid subscriber's account in that the players record a certain number of programs, like a TiVo, and allows the user to listen to pre-recorded programs, often popular songs or talk shows, while on the run. This has caused the music industry to be concerned about the high-fidelity music becoming pirated secondary to the ease of recording. One such a recording device that conveniently records all the music, once hooked up a desktop computer, was successfully forced to stop being sold through the satellite radio companies' portals by the music industry.

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. For example, songs you purchase from iTunes might not work on any digital audio player other than an iPod.

Another way of getting audio files is to rip the songs from radio broadcasts. Many players have the ability to record songs played on the built-in FM tuner. Recently, a Swedish company called PopCatcher has developed a technology to save songs from Internet radio and can distinguish between songs, DJ talks, and commercials for convenience.

Audio formats

Besides MP3, the main formats in use are WMA/PlaysForSure from Microsoft, AAC (the DRM version is from Apple) and ATRAC from Sony, all of which are mutually incompatible.

For those who want an open-source option, there is the Ogg audio format. Ogg is the container format for Vorbis, Theora, Speex, FLAC, and many others.

A huge amount of legal, freely downloadable music is available in MOD format from sites such as The MOD Archive[3]. 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[4] digital audio player. MOD files can be converted into MP3 using Winamp.

Applications of usage

MP3 players have had other media-playing devices supplanted for certain applications. Since some people have downloaded music from the Internet that radio never plays, MP3 players have had the ability to be optimized to comply with peoples' music tastes. One drawback of that for some people is that, people often like to be surprised by radio songs that they never heard before; however the radio has been rendered redundant by other sources of entertainment that play those same songs.

Many breakdancers who have carried their boomboxes to random locations have switched to MP3 players since other semi-portable media such as CDs and audio cassettes tend to be relatively bulky, since some cases of travelling breakdancers see bulkiness as an "issue" for their missions. Also, since boom boxes have sound quality that is somewhat inferior to stereos that audiophiles utilize; the "loss" of MP3 sound is a minor issue for breakdancers who just want to hear the "discernible" sounds of hip hop music which itself is lo-fi from the looping samples from hip hop musicians. However, many models of MP3 player have good bass response.

Some applications where "drawbacks" are present include the usage of stereo systems utilized by audiophiles who prefer higher fidelity.

Other applications implemented with MP3 players include devices that convert sound waves to infra-red strobe which can cause a traffic light to turn green; which in this case legal problems are present.[citation needed]

Major brands

Minor brands

Most modern digital audio players, like the recent Creative Zen players, the Microsoft Zune or the fifth-generation Apple iPod, are technically Portable Media Players.

Controversy

iBox Mediaman, an illegal clone of the iRiver iFP-500

In early 2006, the Consumer Council of Norway brought a case against Apple alleging that the iTunes software infringed on Norway's Marketing Control Act, by locking out competing media players from playing music bought through the iTunes Store and disclaiming liability for any damage done to consumers devices by iTunes Store purchases. By August 2006, Apple had indicated they would work towards resolving the second issue.[3]

In March 2006, the France National Assembly passed the DADVSI bill which was intended to reform French copyright law. One goal of the bill was to criminalise the circumvention of Digital Rights Management (DRM) while at the same time stop DRM from infringing on consumer's "legitimate uses".[4] While the initial drafts would have required companies like Apple and Microsoft to open up their DRM technologies for free to competitors, the French Senate amended the bill to establish a regulatory authority that would consider requests to open DRM technologies. The amendments also allow copyright holders to refuse interoperability requests where lack of interoperability was an intended goal.[5]

Many digital audio player manufacturing companies located in China have been making clones, or similar digital audio players of major brands such as iriver, iPod, and Samsung's Yepp without licenses nor agreements. Despite the objections and lawsuits against these Chinese companies, the Chinese government is not taking any action to prosecute their manufacturers.[6]

References

  1. ^ http://createdigitalmusic.com/2006/07/31/microsoft-not-turning-back-on-playsforsure-with-zune-player/
  2. ^ http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=1235
  3. ^ http://www.out-law.com/page-7166
  4. ^ Tom Sanders (March 22, 2006). "France adopts anti-iPod DRM bill". vnunet.com. Retrieved 2007-01-29.
  5. ^ Nate Anderson (May 11, 2006). "French DRM interoperability de-fanged in Senate". ArsTechnica. Retrieved 2007-01-29.
  6. ^ http://apple.qj.net/iPod-Clone-From-China-The-MP270/pg/49/aid/2321

See also

News and reviews

  • DAP review - Up-to-date news, reviews, for digital audio players, pmp and anything related.
  • CNET Asia Music & Play - News, reviews, features and shootouts for digital audio players in Asia.

History

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Digital audio players.
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