MP3 Audio
A digital audio player (DAP) is a device that stores, organizes and plays audio
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,
the SanDisk Sansa series of players, 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 on one player. Because of the
storage capacity, devices that also display video and pictures are often
hard-drive based.
MP3 CD Players
- Devices that can play audio files from a
CD-ROM in
addition to audio CDs.
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