Portable audio devices have evolved greatly over time, starting from early transistor radios in the 1950s to today's versatile digital music players. The introduction of the cassette player in the 1960s and the Sony Walkman in 1979 brought music into a truly portable format. The arrival of the Sony Discman in 1984 was the first digital music player for CDs. Modern devices like the Apple iPod revolutionized the industry with vast storage for thousands of songs on small, flash memory-based devices. Current portable music players offer extensive functionality for playing various audio and video formats and come in flash memory or hard drive models at a wide range of price points.
2. Table of Contents What is an Portable Audio Device? The beginning of the portable audio device. The introduction to cassette players. Sony Walkman and Sony Discman. Today's music devices. Apple iPod. Different type of players and What they can do. (2)
3. What is an Portable Audio Device? “A portable audio player, sometimes referred to as an MP3 player, is a consumer electronic device that has the primary function of storing, organizing and playing audio files.” (3) MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, Moving Picture Experts Group Layer-3 more commonly referred to as MP3 (4)
5. The beginning of the portable audio device Regency TR-1 1954, I.D.E.A. released the very first portable transistor radio. The Regency came out in a variety of colors over the years. TR-1 tuned stations by a simple gold dial and played through a low-fidelity monophonic speaker. It retailed for $49.95 back in the day, which would make it cost around $325 in today’s dollars. (6)
6. The beginning of the portable audio device KLH Model 11 Portable (7)
7. The beginning of the portable audio device KLH Model 11 Portable 1962, Henry Kloss introduced the KLH Model 11 portable stereo. the first transistorized record player. with the changer/amplifier and two speakers folding into a three-piece suitcase (8)
8. THE INTRODUCTION TO CASSETTE PLAYERS Cassette players were designed by the Phillips corporation in 1963 and sold to the public in 1965. They were originally meant to record vocal dictation but later evolved to replace record players in home entertainment systems. (9) (10)
10. CASSETTE PLAYERS Philips Compact Cassette In 1965, Philips released the first ever compact cassette tape. Originally designed for recording dictations and other boring stuff, the cassette recorded up 45 minutes of sound on single 1/8-inch tape. (12)
12. THE WALKMAN Sony Walkman TPS-L2 1979, Sony released the first truly self-contained portable music system, the TPS-L2 Walkman cassette player. The Walkman’s real innovation was its size, measuring only slightly larger than a cassette tape itself. Featured a pair of portable, lightweight headphones and operating on AA batteries, it ushered in a new era of portability. The original Walkman retailed for around $274 US dollars today. (16)
14. SONY DISCMAN 1984, on the one year anniversary of the introduction of compact discs, Sony introduced their D-50 portable CD player, the first ever portable digital music player. Just slightly larger than a CD case, the player offered all of the great audio quality that digital recordings had to offer. The CD industry experienced sudden growth with the number of CD titles available dramatically increasing. (18)
16. TODAY’S MUSIC PLAYERS MP3 Player Digital sampling is used to convert an audio wave to a sequence of binary numbers that can be stored in a digital format, such as MP3. Common features of all MP3 players are a memory storage device, such as flash memory or a miniature hard disk drive, an embedded processor, and an audio codec microchip to convert the compressed file into an analogue sound signal. (20)
18. APPLE IPOD The iPod line can play several audio file formats including MP3, AAC/M4A, Protected AAC, AIFF, WAV, and Audible audio book. The iPod Photo introduced the ability to display JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, and PNG image file formats. Fifth and sixth generation iPod Classics, as well as third generation iPod Nanos, can additionally play MPEG-4, and QuickTime video formats As of September 9, 2009, more than 220,000,000 iPods had been sold worldwide, making it the best-selling digital audio player series in history (22)
19. DIFFERENT TYPES OF MUSIC PLAYERS Flash drive player Hard drive player (23) (24)
20. DIFFERENT TYPES OF MUSIC PLAYERS Flash player Flash-based Players: These are non-mechanical solid state devices that hold digital audio files on internal flash memory or removable flash media called memory cards. Due to technological advancements in flash memory, these originally low-storage devices are now available commercially ranging up to 64 GB. Basic MP3 player functions are commonly integrated into USB flash drives. (20)
21. DIFFERENT TYPES OF MUSIC PLAYERS Hard drive Hard drive-based Players or Digital Jukeboxes: Devices that read digital audio files from a hard disk drive (HDD). These players have higher capacities currently ranging up to 250 GB. At typical encoding rates, this means that tens of thousands of songs can be stored on one player. (20)
22. WHAT THEY CAN DO Portable audio devices today can do pretty much anything. Play music, watch videos, view images, surf the internet, and play video games. There also being used to replace certain other products. Replacing camera’s as most new portable audio devices are starting to be equipped with a camera and also a voice recorder.
23. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION Portable audio devices have gone from radios, to cassette players, to CDs to now just a little memory card the size of a 2 dollar coin. If your interested just for a few hundred songs then go with a smaller flash player, if you want to carry your whole music library then purchase a hard drive player. Altogether there are so many portable audio devices made today by different companies its hard to decide which one will be carrying your music library.
