What are MP3 players?

MP3 players are a type of digital audio player (DAP) intended for playing audio files encoded using MPEG1 layer 3 (MP3), a format used to significantly compress audio data. MP3 is based on earlier developments of MPEG1 layer 1 and 2 and adoption occurred in the mid to late 90’s. MP3 formats were used for storing and offering simple downloading options of music files from the internet. The trading of internet files via companies like Napster made this file type ideal for the internet as the files could be significantly compressed making downloads quick and easy for everyone.

MP3 players have the advantage of being smaller in size than portable CD players and can easily store and play a large number of MP3 files. There are basically two types of MP3 players:

Flash based MP3 players are based on the use of memory cards for storing data, which are most often integrated in USB key drives with capacities up to 8gb. The advantage is that these flash based MP3 players are very robust and durable as they do not have any movable parts and the fact that fragmentation problems cannot occur.

Another type are hard drive based MP3 players, which as the name clearly indicate is a device that uses a hard drive typically with a capacity between 1.5 and 160 Gb. The large advantage over the flash based MP3 player is the extensive storage capacity.

Manufacturers of MP3 players have developed their own formats with DRM (digital Rights Management) encoding to prevent music piracy. Main formats include AAC (Apple), WMA/ Play for Sure from Microsoft and ATRAC from Sony.

MP4 player:

MP4 players are very similar to MP3 players except that while MP3 players are intended to store and play audio (music) files MP4 players are intended to play video files in the MPEG-4 Part 14 (MP4) format. Apple’s Quicktime development is at the origin of MP4 developments. As is the case with MP3 players, MP4 players can either be flash based or hard drive based, the later again offering the advantage of vast storage capacities. Even though MP4 players are intended to store and play video files MP4 formats can contain text, pictures and video streams. Most of the MP4 players also support the MP3 file formats.