The MP3 Player; Bringing Music To The Masses

The MP3 or digital audio player has been with us for some time and can now be considered the most convenient and portable method of carrying music around with us. Before the development of the MP3 file format and subsequently a player for this format the most common form of digital music device was the personal CD player, however this had serious limitations, particularly in terms of size where it was restricted to the proportions of the CD.

Attempts were made to introduce a smaller device, taking the form of the Mini Disc player although its use was limited and it did not become as popular as the CD. Today, there is an MP3 player in nearly every home in the modern world; in addition they have been incorporated into mobile phones for ultimate convenience. But what is the history of this little device?

The first digital audio player or DAP was produced as recently as 1997 by a company named Sae Han Information Systems, it was marketed as the MPMan by this South Korean company throughout 1998. It utilised a flash based memory but could only hold a paltry sixteen megabytes of data. The size restrictions of this inaugural device led to the development of a player with a hard drive. Compaq conducted the initial foray and with the cooperation of HanGo Electronics released the PJB-100 (Personal Jukebox), a device that could hold almost 4.8 GB of date, equating to over a thousand songs.

It was from this point onwards that a device was released that would not only revolutionise the design of MP3 players but design in other fields. This was the first generation of Apple's iPod. In the beginning it was the Macintosh fraternity who used the device but thanks to a simplistic interface and minimalistic styling it soon gained acclaim and grew in popularity. The second generation iPod was a revelation and was now compatible with Microsoft PCs and hence users now had more freedom to transfer their MP3 tracks. Many other manufacturers also got into the act and released players that were similar in function, if not in form to the iPod.

Fundamentally there are two main types of MP3 players on the market today, these are flash and hard-drive based. Flash players have no mechanical parts an instead hold the musical information on a flash memory that is either built into the device or is on a memory card. While in the early years of DAPs flash devices were seen as the more restricted of the two variants, modem technological advancements however have meant that flash players can hold up to around 32 GB. The benefits of flash MP3 players is that they have no moving parts and are hence less susceptible to failure as well as using less power.

Hard drive MP3 players differ from flash variants in the way that they have a mechanical drive that stores the data. The HDD is read by the device to access the music and because the data is stored mechanically they are able to hold larger amounts of data. In some cases hard drive players can hold as much as 250 GB of data; the benefit is that the user is able to carry their entire music collection wherever they go with ease.

Today the MP3 player is one of the most noticeable forms of technology that we see everyday. On the streets, on the plane, train or bus there is almost guaranteed to be someone listening to a DAP, by reducing the size of the personal music player through advances in data retention technology it has been possible to bring portable music to the masses.