Background and Identification
A type of digital audio player (DAP), MP3 players are electronic devices that can play MP3 digital audio files. Most MP3 players can also play other formats such as Windows Media Audio (WMA), Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), Vorbis, FLAC, Speex and Ogg.
The MP3 audio coding standard was first introduced in 1984 and it was based on several audio compression techniques including modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT), FFT and psychoacoustic methods. The first MP3 player, the MPMan F10, was introduced by SaeHan Information Systems, a South Korean company. Then, the first handheld portable MP3 player was released to the American market was the Eiger Labs F10, a 32 MB imported version of the MPMan F10. The Eiger Labs F10 was a very basic unit and was not user expandable. However, users could upgrade their memory to 64 MB by sending the player back to Eiger Labs with a payment for the upgrade and shipping.
Other MP3 players were also released at the time, including the RIO PMP300 released in 1998 by Diamond Multimedia. During the Christmas of 1998, the RIO PMP300 was a huge success. Since the sales exceeded expectations significantly, interest and investment in digital music grew.
Since its introduction, the MP3 player has evolved to have several types. The most common are pocket devices, which are solid-state devices that can hold digital audio files on internal or external media such as memory cards. Generally, these are low storage devices ranging from 128 MB to 1 GB. There are also MP3 players that can play CDs and that can read digital audio files from a hard drive. The latter players have larger capacities from 1.5 GB to 100 GB. The best example of this type of MP3 player is Apple’s iPod player.
There are a number of manufacturers of MP3 players, and the name of the manufacturer should be on the outer case. Model numbers are slightly harder to find, but are usually underneath the battery, if it is easily accessible.