09 Jul 10 Having Fun With MP3 Players
MP3 or MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 is the most common of all audio formats that are used in transferring and playing back music on digital audio player. Moving Picture Experts Group had designed this format. The Group included Fraunhofer of Germany, AT&T-Bell Labs of USA, Thomson-Brandt, and CCETT amongst others. MP3 was given an ISO/IEC standard in the year 1991.
MP3 reduces the amount of data for recording and yet it maintains the original quality of the uncompressed audio. The MP3 can compress a CD file to one-tenth its size with a mid-range bit rate setting of 128 kbits/s. This compression is done by auditory masking. The first MP3 software encoder was released in 1994. The file extension name was initially .bit which was changed to .mp3 in 1995. Winplay3 was the first real time software released in the same year. Audio files began to be converted to MP3 files and played back in personal computers. MP3 soon spread on the Internet. The release of Winamp in 1997 and the Unix audio player mpg123 in 1998 further popularized MP3. By the later part of 1997, MP3 was being offered free at mp3.com. Peer to peer transferring of music files that are ripped from compact discs rapidly increased. Napster, launched in 1999, assisted large scale peer to peer file sharing. No doubt there was an outcry of violations of copyright leading to loss to recording companies. This was also followed by a spate of allegations and litigations.
MP3 players are of three types. They are the hard drives, micro hard drives and flash based MP3 players. The hard drive based MP3 players is heaviest and largest amongst them. Their capacity is as large as ten gigabytes and more, and is able to hold some 2,900 MP3 files. Similar to this is the micro hard rive based players but with lesser internal storage capacity and smaller size. Their capacity is only six gigabytes which can hold about 1,700 MP3 files. Both hard drive and micro hard drive based MP3 players come with rechargeable batteries. The most compact of them is the flash based MP3 players as it does not have any moving parts. They use very little power. Their internal storage capacity is also very low and range from 32 megabytes to only two gigabytes. With the introduction of WiFi connectivity, it became possible to download music from the Internet. The first such one that was introduced was Sandisk Sansa Connect MP3 player.
Unauthorized sharing of music files is extensive. There are also many companies that sell music in MP3 format such as Xiie.net, Juno Records, Bleep, eMusic, Beatport, Zune Marketplace and Amazon.com. Disputes relating to patent and licensing over MP3 involve Thomson Consumer Electronics, Sisvel S.p.A., Fraunhofer Institute, Texas MP3 Technologies, SanDisk, Samsung Electronics, Apple, Alcatel-Lucent and Texas MP3 Technologies, besides others.
Music lovers can have fun with music as long as they want since MP3 players have improved a lot. People used to purchase costly albums but nowadays, its no longer the case as MP3 players have been a big help.
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Tags: digital audio players, digital gadgets, Entertainment, features of the MP3 players, media, MP3 brands, MP3 manufacturers, MP3 players, Music, portable devices, portable gadgets, portable media players, Technology, types of MP3 players
