A Brief History Of Mp3 Players And The Ways In Which They Work

Posted by Phil Zertisky

February 2, 2010

Understanding and appreciating MP3 players and their capabilities is more necessary now than ever before, especially as we move deeper into this new digital millennium. For sure, having an understanding of these new and extremely versatile portable music stations — to use just one phrase that describes them — can help one in selecting and making the best use out of what many experts call one of the most revolutionary music playing devices ever invented.

Technically, an MP3 player is more properly referred to as a “digital audio player.” It is a form of consumer electronic that takes a digital audio file, stores it, organizes it with other audio files of like kind and then plays it upon command of its user. A digital audio file is the generic term for all of the different ways in which music can be stored digitally, and the most popular at present is the MP3. Sometimes, these devices are also referred to as portable media players because they can also play or display videos and images along with the music within them.

In terms of its historical genesis, MP3 players are the successors to the compact disc (CD) player, which is sometimes also called a “portable audio device.” It might surprise some people to know that the first such digital audio player that could make use of digital files was invented way back in 1979. It could play about 3 1/2 minutes of audio data but did not enter any sort of commercial production. Its inventor, though, was immediately hired by a certain computer company famous for having a certain fruit as its name.

Work continued apace on these players, and the first commercially viable device made its debut in the middle of 1998. These devices made use of what is called “flash memory, ” and could store a relatively small 32 MB of music, which usually constituted 6 to 8 songs, in total. This seemed like a revolution in music storage at the time, as the device was very small and interfaced well with a computer, which was where it picked up its music for playing.

Later that year, a famous computer maker marketed the first MP3 player that used an actual hard drive, of about 2 1/2 inches in size, that was actually quite capacious in its storage capacity, being able to store and then play almost 5 GB of music files, which at that time meant that it could store about 1200 songs. Of course, costs for such a device ran into several hundreds of dollars, but many enthusiasts and fans of digital audio music files and the like loved it.

The most wildly successful MP3 player of all time made its debut in 2001 — and it was marketed by that same fruit-named computer company — with a 5 GB hard drive of about 1.8 inches in size. Gradually, this device has evolved and now features the ability to interface with Windows-based systems, which it couldn’t do when it was first launched those several years ago.

These days, an MP3 player can make use of several different methods for storing, organizing and playing digital audio files. Of course, the two most well known and common are flash memory and hard drive-based memory systems. Flash memory devices are solid-state and non-mechanical in construction. They also hold music either internally, within their memory system, or access music from storage media known as memory cards. Insertion of a card into the player allows for the display and then playing of music on the card.

The most capacious MP3 players, in terms of data that can be stored and then utilized, are hard drive-based, and make use of an extremely small hard disk drive (HDD). In terms of the number of songs that can be stored on such devices, literally hundreds of thousands are able to be placed onto the device and then accessed. This is because some of these players now feature a hard drive of 250 GB. Certainly, the MP3 player has served audio fans well over the last decade, it must be said.

Comprehending and appreciating MP3 players and their versatility is more necessary now than ever before, more so as we move deeper into this new digital millennium. For sure, having an understanding a mp3 player is essential.

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