Monday, September 10, 2007
MP3 Players
MP3 players are also called Digital Audio Players which stores, organizes and plays audio files. MP3 is the common name for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 and it is an audio encoding format. MP3 is an audio-specific format. This uses a loss specific compression algorithm which eliminates certain parts of the sound which is outside the normal hearing range and cannot be heard by the human ears. The audio is encoded by pulse-code modulation.
Internal functioning of a MP3 player:
Digitized Music: The music is stored like any other computer data file in a long series of 1’s and 0’s in MP3 format. The MP3 player can read the digital file and hence produce music.
Compression of the Data file – The codecs (compression decompression) algorithm helps to compress the songs into minimal size with nominal loss of quality. The codecs algorithm has been developed by using the psychoacoustics (perception of sound by brain) and perceptual coding (elimination of indiscernible sounds) principles.
Play Music
An MP3 player utilizes a DAC (digital-to-analog converter) to convert the 1s and 0s into analog signal which can then be amplified and be broadcasted over headphones or speakers. The MP3 player when plays the music compressed by codec, the software on its chip (known as firmware) applies the codec to decode the file and sends the decompressed 1s and 0s to the DAC.
File Format Compatibility: Although MP3 was the first format or codec to be widely accepted but now a variety of codecs (Any type of format which is used to compress a file) are supported by MP3 players. Listed below are formats supported by MP3 players:
• AA
• AAC
• ATRAC3
• FLAC
• MP3
• MP3Pro
• OGG
• WAV/AIFF
• WMA
Different types of MP3 Players according to the storage device they use to read the music from are:
Hard-drive based MP3 Player
These are believed to be the king amongst the MP3 players. A few years back they were available with a capacity of 5GB and today they are available with capacities of 120 GB. One can store his entire music library on these players.
Micro Hard-drive based MP3 Player
These MP3 players currently hold up to 12GB, so they are suitable only for people who want to bring along a selection of songs or music in their collection. The sales of these players have dropped considerably and these players are making way for flash based MP3 players.
Flash-based MP3 Player
These MP3 players use flash memory to store music, data, and sometimes photo and video files. While most players offer about 4GB or approximately around 68 hours of storage, they have distinctive advantage over their MP3 hard drives as they're smaller and more affordable. Very soon the market will witness these players with 8 GB capacities.
With the rise in competition among the MP3 Player manufacturers in the market, every MP3 Player is adding supplementary features in order to sustain the competition. The ten Prime MP3 Player features which are provided as add-ons are as follows:
• Color screens, photo viewing, and video playback
• Radio
• Wireless capability
• Music Recording
• Voice Recording
• Data storage
• Personal information management
• Sound-tweaking options
• Advanced playback features
• Enhanced battery type and more battery life
Internal functioning of a MP3 player:
Digitized Music: The music is stored like any other computer data file in a long series of 1’s and 0’s in MP3 format. The MP3 player can read the digital file and hence produce music.
Compression of the Data file – The codecs (compression decompression) algorithm helps to compress the songs into minimal size with nominal loss of quality. The codecs algorithm has been developed by using the psychoacoustics (perception of sound by brain) and perceptual coding (elimination of indiscernible sounds) principles.
Play Music
An MP3 player utilizes a DAC (digital-to-analog converter) to convert the 1s and 0s into analog signal which can then be amplified and be broadcasted over headphones or speakers. The MP3 player when plays the music compressed by codec, the software on its chip (known as firmware) applies the codec to decode the file and sends the decompressed 1s and 0s to the DAC.
File Format Compatibility: Although MP3 was the first format or codec to be widely accepted but now a variety of codecs (Any type of format which is used to compress a file) are supported by MP3 players. Listed below are formats supported by MP3 players:
• AA
• AAC
• ATRAC3
• FLAC
• MP3
• MP3Pro
• OGG
• WAV/AIFF
• WMA
Different types of MP3 Players according to the storage device they use to read the music from are:
Hard-drive based MP3 Player
These are believed to be the king amongst the MP3 players. A few years back they were available with a capacity of 5GB and today they are available with capacities of 120 GB. One can store his entire music library on these players.
Micro Hard-drive based MP3 Player
These MP3 players currently hold up to 12GB, so they are suitable only for people who want to bring along a selection of songs or music in their collection. The sales of these players have dropped considerably and these players are making way for flash based MP3 players.
Flash-based MP3 Player
These MP3 players use flash memory to store music, data, and sometimes photo and video files. While most players offer about 4GB or approximately around 68 hours of storage, they have distinctive advantage over their MP3 hard drives as they're smaller and more affordable. Very soon the market will witness these players with 8 GB capacities.
With the rise in competition among the MP3 Player manufacturers in the market, every MP3 Player is adding supplementary features in order to sustain the competition. The ten Prime MP3 Player features which are provided as add-ons are as follows:
• Color screens, photo viewing, and video playback
• Radio
• Wireless capability
• Music Recording
• Voice Recording
• Data storage
• Personal information management
• Sound-tweaking options
• Advanced playback features
• Enhanced battery type and more battery life
Labels: MP3 Players
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