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A Brief Timeline of Audio Players
According to The Routledge Guide to Music Technology, the first device capable of recording sound signals was Léon Scott de Martinville’s 1857 invention called the “phonautograph.” His device could not, however, reproduce sound signals, but the idea was adapted by Emile Berliner into a disc music player he called the “gramophone.” Preceding Berliner’s 1887 invention, however, was Thomas Edison’s tinfoil cylinder phonograph, which made the first recording of the human voice in 1877. By 1878, Edis -
Music Age
Digital music is, in short, the binary “ones and zeros” version of its analog equivalent, and recording studios have used it for a number of years. Only in recent years, however, have recording studios allowed electronic distribution of media, though it is in part due to consumer-level technology that allowed people to begin dealing with digital music on their own. File sharing is extremely controversial, and it led to the restructuring of such notorious Internet file-sharing organizations as Na -
Digital Music, Technically Speaking
The conversion from analog audio to digital files allows for the application of compression coding. In the history of audio recorders and players, computers allow users the greatest flexibility and interaction, especially once compression codecs evolved in availability and quality. -
iPod's Domination of the Digital Audio Market
Since digital audio is here to stay, the digital audio player has become a virtually ubiquitous device among trendy music enthusiasts, especially as its increased portability allows people to use it everywhere from the home to the car to a hike in the mountains. Diamond Multimedia’s Rio PMP300 was the first such device to gain widespread attention in the United States, though it was preceded by Eiger Labs’s F10, both in 1998. These audio players, and similar devices from other manufacturers, bec -
iPod's Domination of the Digital Audio Market
At the turn of the millennium, audio players were already being integrated into PDAs and cell phones. But when legal issues temporarily shut down Napster, MP3 file sharing screeched to a halt, opening the door for Steve Jobs and Apple Computer to release their iPod. With the support of the music industry, Apple’s digital audio player and proprietary format quickly took over the digital audio market, leaving other companies from Microsoft to Sony scrambling to get a share. And while the iPod is n
