how do mp3 players work
A digital audio player (DAP) is a device that stores, organizes and plays digital music files. It is more commonly referred to as an MP3 player (because of the MP3 format's ubiquity), but DAPs often play many additional file formats. Some formats are proprietary, such as Windows Media Audio (WMA), and to a degree, Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) and MP3. Some of these formats also may incorporate restrictive DRM technology, such as Janus and FairPlay, which are often part of certain paid download sites. Other formats are completely patent-free or otherwise open, such as Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Speex (all part of the Ogg open multimedia project), and Module file formats. There are three main types of digital audio players:
* Flash-based Players - These are solid state devices that hold digital audio files on internal or external media, such as memory cards. Due to technological limitations, these are relatively low-storage devices, commercially ranging from 128MB to 8GB, such as the 2nd generation iPod nano, the SanDisk Sansa series of players, and the iriver clix, which can often be extended with additional memory. As they are solid state and do not have moving parts, they are very resilient. In effect, they do not suffer limitations that owners of Hard Drive-based players face, such as fears of dropping their player or fragmentation. Such players are commonly integrated into USB keydrives.
* Hard Drive-based Players or Digital Jukeboxes - Devices that read digital audio files from a hard drive. These players have higher capacities, ranging from 1.5GB to 160GB, depending on the hard drive technology. At typical encoding rates, this means that thousands of songs — perhaps an entire music collection — can be stored in one MP3 player. Because of the storage capacity, devices that also display video and pictures are often hard-drive based.
* MP3 CD Players - Devices that can play audio files from a CD-ROM in addition to audio CDs.