What to know about MP3 players and their operation can be very important these days as we begin to almost entirely eliminate analog data storage in this new millennium. Being able to understand how these extremely versatile music players work can help in picking out and then making the best use of a device that many music experts say has revolutionized the music industry, in mostly positive ways.

To start, an MP3 player is more technically known as a "digital audio player." It is a consumer electronic and is able to store vast amounts of music, organize it and then play it in the form of a digital audio file. This particular kind of file is also able to be stored in a variety of audio and video formats, including the most popular of all; the MP3. Some of these devices are also referred to as being portable media players because they can, indeed, play video or display images while also playing the music stored within them.

MP3 players are the direct successors to the still-popular CD players. These compact disc players are sometimes also known as portable audio devices. It might come as a surprise to know that the first actual digital audio playing device that could pull from a digital file was first invented over 30 years ago. It could play about 3.5 minutes of audio, though it was purely a demonstration device and did not enter production. However, the inventor made out because he was immediately hired by a certain very famous fruit-named computer company.

Work continued on the development of this digital audio player for the next couple of decades and the first commercially successful device made its debut in mid-1998. It used what we now call "flash memory, " and could store a relatively paltry six to twelve songs in its 32 MB flash memory drive. At that time, this seemed revolutionary, especially as the device was extremely small and could work very well with a desktop or laptop computer.

Later that year, a different computer maker brought to the market the first MP3 player based off of a computer hard drive, which was about 2 1/2 inches in size and had about 5 GB of memory. This translated to a storage capacity of nearly 1200 songs, people. People, of course, flocked to the device and paid quite handsomely for it at the time because of its storage capacity.

The first -- and truly wildly successful -- MP3 player from that computer company with a fruit for its first name made its debut in 2001, and featured a 5 GB hard drive with a 1.8 inch size. Over time, this very successful device has evolved such that it is the undisputed market leader and can actually use Windows-based software, which it initially could not do when it was first introduced to the market all those years ago.

These days, an MP3 player can make use of several different methods for storing, organizing and playing digital audio files. Of course, the two most well known and common are flash memory and hard drive-based memory systems. Flash memory devices are solid-state and non-mechanical in construction. They also hold music either internally, within their memory system, or access music from storage media known as memory cards. Insertion of a card into the player allows for the display and then playing of music on the card.

Hard drive-based MP3 players, of course, make use of what is basically a very small hard disk drive (HDD), and can usually store gargantuan numbers in terms of music files, sometimes exceeding 250 GB. This means hundreds of thousands of songs are possible, though these particular players are more mechanically complex. At any rate, a good MP3 player has a universe of capabilities and functions that have served the music-listening public well over the last decade.

Comprehending and fully appreciating MP3 players and their versatility is more necessary now than ever before, especially as we move deeper into this new digital millennium. For sure, having an understanding a mp3 player is essential.

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5. The Archos MP3 Players - The Greatest of Its Breed

Tags: Consumer Electronics, entertainment, Ipods, mp3 players

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