My apologies for borrowing the title of Depeche Mode’s….what….sixth album?  And what about “album”?  Does that show my age or what?  But while dithering about trying to come up with the title for my very first post to this new WordPress blog I wanted to get it right and considering what I intend to cover I think I did.  If not, please feel free to offer an alternative title in the comments.  I’m all ears….so to speak. Thinking back on the history of consumer electronics one would find far fewer devices available to any family.  A radio was the only real consumer electronic for decades.  And, to a lesser extent, the phonograph made inroads into family living rooms.  Following World War II the world saw television signals delivered to the various aerials one would have either inside or outside the home and those transmissions flickered to life in varying shades of gray, forever changing the sound of radio. Eventually audio equipment in the guises of turntables, 8-track tape (and later cassette) players, and the like found a place in the family home.  Regularly a teen’s first major holiday or birthday gift would be one of those all-in-one stereo systems, resplendent with record player, cassette deck, AM/FM tuner and speakers.  Shitty speakers at that.  Not that the sound coming from the pitiful electronics inside the unit were that much better, but the truly weak link was always the rubbish speakers included with these all-in-one systems. But everything changed in the world of music when listeners were finally able to take music with them, wherever they went. We actually have to jump back to 1965 for the nascent start to it all in the way of the invention of the compact cassette by Philips.  But nothing else really transpired until 1979 when the innovative folks at Sony Electronics unleashed upon the unsuspecting public the Walkman.

Sony Walkman TPS-L2

The original model, the TPS-L2, wasn’t just a cassette tape player, but recorder as well.  It would turn out to be the player portion that would really take off in the consumer marketplace and push Sony to heights it hadn’t yet seen. Suddenly folks no longer had to be tied to a home or car stereo to listen to music.  Granted, portable radios had been around for decades, but that entailed listening to the music someone else wanted you to hear.  No longer.  Now you could bring along your prerecorded tapes or create your own tapes and truly enjoy the liberty of listening to your music on your terms. Over a period of about ten years I owned, if memory serves, about three of these devices.  I think one was a Sony and the other two came from a competitor named Aiwa.  I couldn’t find a picture of either model I owned, but I found this and it is very close to the latter of the two models.

Aiwa Portable Cassette Player

All of these portable cassette players were pretty cool devices, with each more current model offering better sound quality and features.  By the time I purchased the last one it included electronic equalization presets, Dolby B noise reduction, Type II metal tape bias adjustment and pretty decent battery life.  Yet, as good and useful as these devices were, they were something of a pain in the ass. I hated prerecorded cassettes as their sound quality was, simply put, atrocious.  Never did I hear a single one that sounded good.  Not even okay.  They always sounded awful.  The only choice for me was to create my own cassettes; mixed tapes, as we called them back then.  I purchased quality TDK (preferred) or Maxell and made full use of the Type II metal bias and Dolby B for superior audio quality.  I would spend hours putting together a mixed tape as it was an incredibly laborious project to both select the tracks and then obtain the best level for each individual song before actually recording it.  In essence I was listening to each song twice:  once to find the right level and once more when I actually recorded it to tape. This labor of love was always worth it though.  The quality of the audio was as good as was possible, but there were still the drawbacks and limitations inherent in the portable cassette player.  In my opinion the single biggest issue was the problem of flutter.  ”Flutter” is a technical term, but made easy to understand one can think of it like this:  the cassette player, for a variety of reasons, couldn’t always maintain a perfect speed while playing back the cassette.  Minute changes in speed of the tape during playback created a fluttering of the sound; a minor change in pitch.  A very minor change in pitch, but one that could be noticed, especially when the player was subjected to rapid changes in motion. “But why would a portable cassette player be subjected to rapid changes in motion?” you ask?  Simple, unless you were sitting still and the player was resting, the player would be moving.  For instance, I used to take my players with me when I went walking.  I never jogged or ran to keep in shape, but I enjoyed a fast walk.  If I attached any player to my belt via the included clip, the player would be jiggled about as my hips moved up, down, left and right while I walked.  This rapid motion was more than the AA or AAA batteries could overcome and so the player would speed up and slow down in rapid succession:  flutter. I mitigated this problem by carrying the player in hand while walking, which introduced another problem:  hand cramping.  Walking for sixty or ninety minutes (the usual time I walked) I would clutch the player as my arms swung back and forth.  This motion was such that flutter was hardly ever noticeable, but these devices where a handful in size and holding onto them in a secure fashion (never dropped one!) was tiring.  Yet these were the things one went through if they really wanted to listen to their music under the best conditions possible during those years.  But then things changed in a very dramatic fashion.  The world, for better or worse, went digital.

iPod Shuffle (1st gen)

Certainly the iPod line of portable digital music players were not the first.  Nope.  This honor probably belongs to the MPMan created and sold by SaeHan Information Systems of S. Korea.  It first appeared in the States in 1998 and was able to hold about 30-minutes worth of digitally encoded music.  Certainly not much, but a start nevertheless. A handful of players were developed over the following years, but it was the introduction of Apple Computers iPod in 2001 that forever changed the face of portable music.  I think it would not be unfair to say the iPod revolutionized the digital portable music medium. My first experience with a MP3 player was the above-pictured iPod Shuffle.  I purchased two 1GB versions; one for me and one for the daughter, whose portable CD player had recently died.  It was an amazing product and using iTunes was so simple, so intuitive, so convenient.  Suddenly the many, many hours spent creating mixed tapes were a total and complete thing of the past.  Now I could spend a few hours burning my CDs to the computer via iTunes and then transfer whatever music I wanted to the Shuffle.  I could let iTunes randomly select songs.  I could select the songs.  I could create playlists that would include just music I wanted (maybe by genre, year of release, artist, etc.).  It was amazing and I was completely smitten with the technology. But what do I remember the most about this experience?  The fact the Shuffle came with a lanyard so that I could do whatever it was I wanted without having to HOLD the damn thing!  Oh, and NO flutter issues at all.  Life was sweet.  But my appetite was now whetted and I needed more. However, the daughter’s Shuffle died a premature death and between this and the cost of iPods with greater storage capacity I was forced to venture to other manufacturers, which wasn’t a bad or good thing in the great scheme of life.  At this time I moved into the world of Creative Lab products.

Creative Zen Plus

The Zen line of MP3 players had received almost nothing but solid, almost rave, reviews all around the Internet.  Their price point was superior to the iPod and so it was I found myself purchasing a Zen Plus (the Plus included a FM radio, while the non-Plus model did not).  I made this purchase around 2004 and while very pleased with the audio quality of the Zen Plus, I was less-than-pleased with the included and required software.  In the end I used only Windows Media Player to transfer music to the player, but I first had to install the software which came with the player.  Why this was, I’m not quite certain, but it was clearly stated in the operating instructions that to do otherwise might leave me with a small, plastic paperweight.  Joy. While the Zen Plus was a fine player in most every regard, I had a fair number of problems with it and my soon-after purchase of the Creative Vision M.

Creative Labs Zen Vision M

I purchased this 30GB hard-drive based player (the Shuffle and Zen Plus being flash-based) for the purpose of taking it to my temporary job where I could listen to music all day long.  The 4GB Zen Plus left me hearing the same music twice within a few days, but 30GB…well…let’s put it this way:  my temporary employment gig came to an end before I heard the same song twice. But both of these otherwise competent and enjoyable Creative products gave me no small amount of fits and aggravation during their ownership. (to be clear I still own both, but haven’t used the Zen Plus since it died and the Vision M is used sparingly at most)  Both units seemed to have some issue with being recognized when plugged into my desktop PC.  Neither would be recognized in either Windows Media Player or the proprietary Creative software.  This was most odd.  This was very annoying.  And no amount of research or such provided me with any satisfactory resolution to the problem.  Sometimes the players were recognized and sometimes they weren’t. So it was that between this problem with being recognized by the computer and the premature death of my Zen Plus, I elected to again look elsewhere for my portable digital music needs. I enjoyed a very brief (like less than one week) affair with a Sansa product (made by SanDisk I thought I would give it a chance because I use SanDisk storage cards for my cameras), which was promptly returned as the audio quality was less than acceptable.  The player itself was pretty sharp and worked well (meaning the user interface was sufficient), but the sound quality, even with better ear buds, was simply not up to par. Enter the Sony Walkman NWZ-A818…

Sony NWZ-A818

The center player pictured above is the one I acquired.  With 8GB of flash memory it certainly would allow me to carry around a fair amount of music and did so in a well-designed and solid-feeling MP3 player I had yet owned.  But better than these impressions was the sound quality, which left behind even the great sounding Creative products.  The Sony, and its superior sounding ear buds, was a wake-up call to how good a MP3 player could be in every manner. The overall design was compact, but not too tiny.  The device felt solid in the hand.  The user interface was clean and well organized.  The display was very, very nice.  But ultimately it was both the sound quality and fact it needed no proprietary software that made this purchase so freakin’ smart.  I plugged it into my desktop PC, synced to it a randomly selected group of songs in Windows Media Player and was off and running in less than 20-minutes. I really cannot convey how impressed I have been with this player.  The whole experience is made even more impressive when one considers how lost in the wilderness was Sony for so many years.  For whatever reason Sony seemed to make mistake after mistake after mistake with its product line in the portable digital music age.  Proprietary codecs (the programming language that converts your CDs to a file format recognized by Sony players) and uninspired design left the former world champion of portable music languishing in the dust.  Mostly Apple’s dust.  The only complaint I have, and it really shouldn’t be viewed as a complaint, but as an unfortunate choice on my part, is that the NWZ-A818 is not compatible with iTunes even though it will play AAC encoded songs (AAC is one of a number of codecs that are used to convert CD songs into music files read by MP3 players – I’ll actually address this sort of stuff in my next post).  I say this is unfortunate because I recently acquired an iMac and am looking at making it my primary music playing computer, thus leaving the Windows world behind.  But for right now when I want to listen to take my music with me, and I desire sonic quality, I grab the Sony.  Period. But the story doesn’t end here.  Nope.  That would be too easy and make for a shorter story, so you’re stuck with me for a while longer. Actually, my next MP3 player wasn’t specifically purchased for its MP3 playing abilities.  Nope.  Instead it was purchased as a cell phone.  Say hello to my little friend; the Apple iPhone 3GS

iPhone 3GS by Apple

Besides the loads of other things this incredible device does it also serves as a media player, which includes music.  To be frank, while I have about 400 songs synced to it, I don’t actually listen to music on it.  I did, however, bring my ear buds (and not the horrible ones provided by Apple – less than useless they are) along and use it to both listen to music and watch some t.v. shows I synced to it, while I was in Florida visiting my parents at the beginning of September.  It is a fine and competent MP3 player, but I would not go so far as to say it sounds as good as the Sony (and I’m using the Sony ear buds so it’s a pretty straight up comparison).  I’d probably say the sonic quality is on par with the formerly discussed Creative products, which is very good, but still not in the same sphere as the Sony. But speaking of the trip to my parents….while there I received an e-mail from Apple, which mentioned they had refurbished, 2nd generation iPod Shuffles on sale with free shipping for a limited time.  The new 3rd generation iPod Shuffles had just come out and I guess Apple was anxious to unload the remnants of the 2nd generation players (the model I purchased is pictured below).

iPod Shuffle (2nd gen) by Apple

Now if you’ve managed to stay with me thus far you may be wondering why I would bother to purchase a 2GB iPod Shuffle when I already have:  Creative Zen Vision M, Sony NWZ-A818 and iPhone 3GS.  The question is even more poignant considering I own a stretchy arm-band thing for taking the Sony on the go when I hike, bike or…well…vacuum the house.  Well the reason is really quite simple:  2GB of storage is just about right for 200 songs, which is really great for not hearing the same song twice if you use the device only a fistful of hours each week.  The Sony, while a remarkable player, had become uncomfortable to wear with the arm band as the band makes me itch and, to keep it secure on my bicep, cuts off the circulation of blood to my lower arm.  Just a bit, mind you, but the slight tingling sensation in my fingers wasn’t any fun. When I saw the price,which was very good, I thought to myself “Why this over the new 3rd gen model?” especially when I had read that the latest version had superior sound quality.  But this answer was also pretty simple: the latest version did not include any controls on the actual player, but were moved to the Apple ear buds.  Which suck.  Totally.  And I wasn’t about to wait for a 3rd party product to come out for which I’d have to shell out another $20 – $60, thus raising the cost of this entire endeavor.  So I made the purchase from the comfort of my parents home and the 2nd generation iPod Shuffle in bright green arrived at my house a day after I arrived home. Sure…the sound quality is only okay.  Good, but nothing to write home about.  And sure, it only holds 200 songs (encoded in AAC at the highest possible variable bit rate), but you know what?  I don’t care.  I bought it for a specific need and purpose and it fits them perfectly.  I clip the little device to my clothes (usually along the hem of the neck opening of my t-shirt), pop the ear buds into my ears and I’m off and running with tunes while I do whatever it is I need to get done. What an amazing tale, eh? Okay.  This is a pretty long post.  And I really didn’t tell you much of anything other than my personal purchase history and impressions of MP3 players I have owned.  However, I did this to establish some ground work for what will be my next entry, which will also be related to the world of digital music and MP3 players.  In my next post I will discuss some of the criticisms of how we digitize music and the devices upon which we play said music.  And why I think those folks are crazy. I felt it was important to let it be known that I wasn’t simply making observations from afar, but that I actually have lived in the trenches, so to speak, of digital music playing device ownership.  It is from here that I will speak as I reconcile my personal purchasing habits (and the subsequent use of these devices) to what I read in the media. Until then…

امروزه همه ی ما از MP3 ها استفاده میکنیم. iPod ها همه جا حاضرند، تلفن های همراه میتوانند این فرمت را اجرا کنند، حتی پخش های جدید اتوموبیل ها نیز فرمت را پشتیبای میکنند. ولی این قضیه همیشه به این شکل نبوده است، به سال 1998 برمیگردیم، سایت های بسیار غیر قانونی ای همچون Audiofind آهنگ های هنرمندان را به صورت کاملا آزادانه و گسترده ای در فرمت های واقعا ضعیف 112 و 128 کیلوبایت در ثانیه ارائه میدادند و ما با مودم های 56K خود گاها وقتی بالغ بر نیم ساعت برای دانلود آنها میگذاشتیم.
شما آهنگ ها را بر کامپیوتر خود اجرا میکردید و یا حتی آنها را به  CD انتقال میدادی و مهم نبود که اولا مبلغی مثلا پوند را برای یک CD خام بپردازید و یا اینکه 30 دقیقه وقت برای رایت یک CD وقت بگذارید در حالی که کمی هم دعا می خواندید تا CD شما نسوزد.
به هر حال، MPMan F10 دویست و پنجاه دلاری آمد و همه چیز را عوض کرد. با یک پک سرمست کننده ی 32 مگلابایت و با اظهار سپاسگزاری، قبلیت ارتقا به 64 مگابایت. مدتی بعد از ارائه ی Napster .MPMan به میان آمد و به ما کمک کرد تا فایل های موسیقی خود را بتوانیم به اشتراک بگذاریم و سازمان دهی کنیم. فرستادن آن فایل ها به دستگاه با استفاده از پورت سریال  یک فرآیند آرام و دردناک بود، ولی مهم نبود. کمتر کسی می دانست که 10 سال بعد حتی مادر بزرگ ها و پدر بزرگ ها هم موسیقی خود را از اینترنت دانلود میکنند و انسانی میتواند در خیابان صد ها گیگابات موسیقی باکیفیت بالا را با خود حمل کند.

منبع:

Retro Computing Corner: The World’s First MP3 Player c. 1998

رضا

Wow, bold claims! However, if you are not blind there is enough evidence to suggest that I am correct. You just have to use a little history mixed with forsight! So here goes! 

The worlds first MP3 player

The first MP3 player ever released in the world was the dubious MPMan in Asia. Back in 1998, a whole decade ago, geeks with MP3 song files could finally trundle around with all their music in their pocket. Apple’s iPod didn’t hit the market until 2001 when their first harddrive equipped version was released. And then the whole world started to take notice of MP3 players. How was it so different? It plays songs right? Like all the others? 

Well Apple simply designed something that was undeniably sexy compared to every other device on the market. Its utalitarian approach to aesthetics give it the warm fuzzy feeling girls get from a free manicure. But it was too early at this point for Joe Blogs and his brothers to buy, but this didn’t stop them lusting over it! In fact, 96% of the market couldn’t even use it if they wanted with it being a Mac only device. They redefined the interface to make it as easy as possible to use what was considered at the time a complex gadget for geeks. 

Apple has the resources to appeal to all categories of user.

It took a few years for Apple to get around to making it PC compatible. But it was worth the wait. Developing the iTunes store and moving over to USB 2.0 connections all played their part in making the iPod the goliath that it is today. Apple’s ability to maintain refinement of their products on a yearly basis puts them in a powerful position. The competition is always targetting a product that Apple has already begun phasing out. Sometimes its incredibly dramatic. 

Remember the iPod mini? Little bit of a hit that one. It was the new itPod. And so, Sony, Samsung, Microsoft and many others all set about making their very own iPod mini. Apple already has a massive market share, and the mini was just claiming even more of it. The competition had to act fast. Sleeker more compelling players were being released weekly to mixed reviews. They couldn’t quite get it right…

And then Apple announce that there is no more iPod mini. Mini is too big. It has to be smaller. iPod miniscule? Nope – the nano was born. The entire MP3/Technology industry shits itself. Apple were incredibly shrewed at this point. They practically abused their dominant position to start literally buying up all the Flash memory that they could at ridiculously low prices. This led to smaller, cheaper and higher capacity models. I predict Apple will be buying about 1/2 of the worlds flash memory chips in future to power all their innovate portable devices. They’ve started with the ‘Air’, tablets are on the way, iPhones will be doubling in size every 6 months… I can’t see any other result.

Zune takes a dump on users choosing the worlds most boring colour.

Microsoft is the only company that’s ever really going to be able to compete with Apple at this level. They’re the only one with the wads of cash to throw at it. The Zune was a prime example of them just not getting things right. For a start – you want to compete with the hippest product on the planet and you decide BROWN is the best colour to offer? I have never even seen the Zune in the flesh. It’s a joke. Just last week the official saddo evangelist for the Zune; the infamous Zuneguy who had the Zune logo tattoos on his body, slagged off the Zune. He’s disgusted with the rate of development and the change in product strategy. Its only been a few years for the Zune, but sales have been dismal at best. 

I think the Zune is going to be a case study for every other major phone manufacturer out there. All massive organisations used to developing electronic devices, with huge R&D departments and years of experience. 

The day the iPhone was announced was an eye-opener even for me. I’m a huge Apple fan and have followed their progression for the last 6 years. I thought I could almost predict what they’re next products would be like. When the iPhone first appeared, I was god-smacked. It was easily the coolest tech device in existence, but a factor of 2. That’s a massive achievement. With its release I think it was almost the beginning of the inevitable. The iPod will eventually disappear and the iPhone will be the next big device. Convergence is the key. 

What Sony, Nokia & Samsung don’t seem to understand is that Apple poses unsurmountable challenges that they just CANNOT compete with. Some examples of the key differences that the competition will NEVER be able to replicate the same. 

• General control of the Flash Memory market
• Apple is synonymous with ‘cool as fuck i want it’
• A real world OS that is awesome
• A device that your parents would be able to use, hell even my Nan can use mine. 
• The worlds best R&D with top names like Jonathan Ive
• Steve Jobs’ vision
• The iTunes store as a media selling/rental place
• Apples’ inability to make anything complicated or unsatisfactory
• The fact that all these old iPod users will want to migrate to save the pocket space
• Regular software updates that are actually a big deal to the consumers
• The larger the iPhone fan base gets the more benefits of having them would be
• The only free mobile app OS in existence. And it also happens to be the most sophisticated
• A loyal fan base of proficient app developers on beck and call
• A world wide free distribution mechanism for apps. 
• Its patience with feature releases to make sure that they don’t kill their product (i.e. copy & paste or flash support)
• The device has a ‘jesus’ like following. Every new release.. for ever.. will be met with 12am/7am openings, press fever and worldwide shortages. 

I could really go on and on. Google Andriod can’t compete. Symbian certainly can’t complete. Its a dead argument. Motorola. They’re a proficient phone company surely with the old RAZR under their belt? Hell even I had a RAZR. That was the worst phone experience I had ever had. Sony was years ahead of it, but Apple is a decade ahead of Sony. Its almost like we’re reviewing devices from different eras, like comparing a TV from the 80s to one in the 90s to one from 2010.

Apple practically pranked poor defenceless Motorola during their recent low point.

Apple have been so clever with the iPhone. The practically PRANKED Motorola with the old ROCR deal. Apple giggled ferociously at Motorolas attempt at an Apple product. iTunes on a phone. Genius. This is the pinnacle of mobile application technology obviously. 

They’re new iPhones will be fairly predictable for the forseeable future. The 3G iPhone was practically the same. But if and when they do have a new product in development, none of us will see it. If we do see something that may look plausible, even that may be fake. For example – internally at Apple they often product fake prototype models and distribute them internally to see if there are any leaks.

This image appeared on the front of a French newspaper before the iPhone launch. Many fell for it.

A prime example would be the fake iPhone seen on the front of some French newspaper a few days before the iPhone was realeased. It looked like a perfectly good entry into the mobile phone market. Hell, they could probably take it to market and still make headway against Nokia etc. The difference is Apple want to reinvent things, not just stick with things because ‘that is how it is done’.

Il faut remonter à 1979 pour retrouver le Walkman de Sony qui est à l’origine du concept de baladeur musical, et il a fallu attendre 1984 pour voir le premier baladeur numérique apparaître, le Discman de Sony. C’est en 1992 que Sony a lancé le MZ1, son premier baladeur basé sur le nouveau support qu’il tentait d’imposer, le MiniDisc (MD), et utilisant le système de compresion audio Atrac. L’apparition du format MP3 en 1995 conjuguée au cout élevé des lecteurs MD marquent un coup d’arrêt pour ce format qui restera réservé à une “élite”.

Le premier baladeur MP3 sort en 1998, c’est le MPMAN MP-F10, (16 Mo de mémoire flash interne). Il fut trés vite suivi par d’autre marques, mais ce type de baladeurs ne réussit pas à percer à cause du rapport prix/capacité trop élevé des mémoires flash. En 1999, Remote Solutions sort le premier baladeur à disque dur, le Personal Jukebox (4.86 Go) qui était une vrai révolution pour l’époque, puis Archos, Creative, Philips suivirent sans grand succés, et il fallut attendre 2001 et la sortie de l’iPod d’Apple (5 Go) pour que ce genre de baladeur rencontre le succés qu’on leur connait, avec l’arrivée par la suite de la photo, puis de la vidéo (baladeurs MP4) et enfin, l’iTouch, le summum du baladeur numérique multimédia, qui a enfin abandonné le disque dur pour revenir à la mémoire flash (16 Go, à quand les 32, 64 et 128 Go?) et dispose du wifi, ce qui caractérise la 5° génération de baladeurs numériques.

Mais là n’est pas mon intérêt et je préfère revenir aux baladeurs MP3 à mémoire flash avec connecteur USB intégré, qui ne se limitent pas aux étiquettes “low-cost” et “cheap” que certains leurs donnent, mais qui selon moi apportent le meilleur rapport capacité/encombrement/autonomie/prix grace à l’augmentation de la capacité et à la diminution du prix des mémoires flash. Ils sont surtout destinés à ceux qui veulent simplement écouter de la musique, et qui se passent trés bien du reste.

merci à Wikipedia pour les dates

En Alemania a mediado de la década de los 80, se desarrolló en el instituto Fraunhofer, el formato MP3. Mientras que los primeros aparatos que lo reprodujeron fueron el MP Man y el  Diamond Multimedia Rio MP300. En el año 2001 la Apple lanzó el iPod volviendo locos a sus consumidores porque sus ventajas son una mayor capacidad de almacenamiento y mejor calidad de sonido y video

Vía R. popular Mechanics (Edicción Continental  No.58/06 • Junio 2005 / Imágenes Google