A MP3 player is an electronic device that can play digital audio files. Since the mp3 format is widely used, almost all players can play that format; in addition, there are many other digital audio formats - some proprietary and incorporating digital rights management - that some MP3 players can recognize. These formats include Ogg Vorbis, Windows Media Audio (WMA), and Advanced Audio Codec (AAC).
There are several types of MP3 players:
- Devices that play CDs. Often, they can be used to play both audio CDs and homemade data CDs containing MP3 or other digital audio files.
- Devices that hold digital audio files on internal or external memory cards. These are generally fairly low-storage devices, with 64M and 128M capacity players being fairly common. Such players may also be inegrated into USB memory sticks.
- Devices that read digital audio files from a hard drive. These players are high-capacity, with hard drives starting at 5G and going up to 40G and 60G players. At standard encoding rates, this means that thousands of songs - perhaps an entire music collection - can be stored in one MP3 player.
Common devices
Well-known MP3 players include:
- iPod by Apple Computer
- Creative Nomad by Creative Labs
- Rio by SONICblue
Generally speaking, MP3 players are portable, which means they use batteries and you listen to music through headphones.