Digital audio player

An MP3 player or Digital Audio Player is an electronic device that can play digital audio files. It is a type of Portable Media Player. The term 'MP3 player' is a misnomer, as most players play more than the MP3 file format.

Since the MP3 format is widely used, almost all players can play that format. In addition, there are many other digital audio formats. Some formats are proprietary, such as MP3, Windows Media Audio (WMA), and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC). Some of these formats also may incorporate digital rights management (DRM), such as WMA DRM, which are often part of paid download sites. Other formats are patent-free or otherwise open, such as Vorbis, FLAC, and Speex (all part of the Ogg open multimedia project).

In 1981 Kane Kramer filed for a UK patent for the IXI, the first Digital Audio Player. UK patent 2115996 was issued in 1985, and U.S. Patent 4,667,088 was issued in 1987. The player was as big as a credit card and had a small LCD screen, navigation and volume buttons and would have held at least 8 MB of data in a solid state bubble memory chip with a capacity of 3.5 minutes worth of audio. Plans were made for a 10-minute stereo memory card and the system was at one time fitted with a hard drive which would have enabled over an hour of recorded digital music. Later Kramer set up a company to promote the IXI and five working prototypes were produced with 16 bit sampling at 44.1 kilohertz with the pre-production prototype being unveiled at the APRS Audio/Visual trade exhibition in October 1986. However, in 1988 Kramer's failure to raise the £60,000 required to renew the patent meant it entering the public domain, but he still owns the designs. In the year 1987 a German Company by the name of Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft started the research program for coding music with the high quality and low bit rate sampling at its institute. The project was controlled by an expert in mathematics and electronics, Karlheinz Brandenburg. Then in 1997, Tomislav Uzelac who was an employee of Advanced Multimedia Products Company, made the first successful MP3 player after Frauenhofer’s MP3 became a disaster. Seven years later, He managed to produce and release his MP3 in the US markets. This was the earliest Portable player and was known as AMP MP3 Playback Engine.

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