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102-810: MiniDisc ( MD ) is an erasable magneto-optical disc-based data storage format offering a capacity of 60, 74, and later, 80 minutes of digitized audio . Sony announced the MiniDisc in September 1992 and released it in November of that year for sale in Japan and in December in Europe, North America, and other countries. The music format was based on ATRAC audio data compression , Sony's own proprietary compression code. Its successor, Hi-MD , would later introduce

204-453: A ferromagnetic material sealed beneath a plastic coating. The only physical contact is during recording when a magnetic head is brought into contact with the side of the disc opposite to the laser, similar to Floptical drives , but not the same. During reading, a laser projects a beam on the disk and, according to the magnetic state of the surface, the reflected light varies due to the magneto-optic Kerr effect . During recording, laser power

306-523: A line-level audio signal (radio, voice, etc.). Devices such as CD players can be connected to the MP3 player (using the USB port) in order to directly play music from the memory of the player without the use of a computer. Modular MP3 keydrive players are composed of two detachable parts: the head (or reader/writer) and the body (the memory). They can be independently obtained and upgradable (one can change

408-626: A personal organiser are emulated, or support for video games , like the iriver clix (through compatibility of Adobe Flash Lite ) or the PlayStation Portable , is included. Only mid-range to high-end players support "savestating" for power-off (i.e. leaves off song/video in progress similar to tape-based media). Nearly all players are compatible with the MP3 audio format, and many others support Windows Media Audio (WMA), Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) and WAV . Some players are compatible with open-source formats like Ogg Vorbis and

510-510: A CD to a 292 kbit/s data stream, roughly a 5:1 reduction. ATRAC was also used on nearly all flash memory Walkman devices until the 8 series. The ATRAC codec differs from uncompressed PCM in that it is a psychoacoustic lossy audio data reduction scheme. Like other lossy audio compression formats, it is intended to be acoustically transparent, but some listeners claim to be able to hear audible artifacts. There have been four versions of ATRAC, each claimed by Sony to more accurately reflect

612-470: A bitrate of 132 kbit/s and also uses separate stereo coding. The third mode, LP4, has a bitrate of 66 kbit/s and uses joint stereo coding . The sound quality is noticeably degraded compared to the other two modes, but is sufficient for many uses. Tracks recorded in LP2 or LP4 mode play back as silence on non-MDLP players. Debuting in late 2001, NetMD recorders allow music files to be transferred from

714-486: A colour liquid crystal display (LCD) or organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screen is used as a display for PMPs that have a screen. Various players include the ability to record video, usually with the aid of optional accessories or cables, and audio, with a built-in microphone or from a line out cable or FM tuner . Some players include readers for memory cards , which are advertised to equip players with extra storage or transferring media. In some players, features of

816-541: A competing system, DCC, on a magnetic tape cassette. This created marketing confusion very similar to the videocassette format war of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Sony licensed MD technology to other manufacturers, with JVC , Sharp , Pioneer , Panasonic and others producing their own MD products. However, non-Sony machines were not widely available in North America, and companies such as Technics and Radio Shack tended to promote DCC instead. Despite having

918-453: A computer to a recorder (but not in the other direction) over a USB connection. In LP4 mode, speeds of up to 32× real-time are possible and three Sony NetMD recorders (MZ-N10, MZ-N910, and MZ-N920) are capable of speeds up to 64× real-time. NetMD recorders all support MDLP. When transferring music in SP mode using NetMD with SonicStage, what is transferred is actually padded LP2. That is to say that

1020-460: A concession, the last Hi-MD players can upload to PC a digitally recorded file which can be resaved as a WAV ( PCM ) file and thus replicated. The digitally encoded audio signal on a MiniDisc has traditionally been data-compressed using the ATRAC (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding) format. ATRAC was devised to allow MiniDisc to have the same runtime as a CD. ATRAC reduces the 1.4 Mbit/s of

1122-831: A crossfade mixer. Many such devices also tend to be smartphones . Many mobile digital media players have last position memory , in which when it is powered off, a user does not have to worry about starting at the first track again, or even hearing repeats of others songs when a playlist, album, or whole library is cued for shuffle play , in which shuffle play is a common feature, too. Early playback devices to even remotely have "last position memory" that predated solid-state digital media playback devices were tape-based media, except this kind suffered from having to be "rewound", whereas disc-based media suffered from no native "last position memory", unless disc-players had their own last position memory. However, some models of solid-state flash memory (or hard drive ones with some moving parts) are somewhat

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1224-468: A decline in sales of PMPs, leading to most devices being phased out, such as the iPod Touch on May 10, 2022, though certain flagship devices like the Sony Walkman are still in production. Portable DVD and BD players are still manufactured. Digital audio players are generally categorised by storage media: Some MP3 players can encode directly to MP3 or other digital audio formats directly from

1326-664: A disc becomes full, the recorder can simply direct the data into sections where erased tracks reside. This can lead to fragmentation but unless many erasures and replacements are performed, the only likely problem is excessive searching, reducing battery life. The data structure of the MiniDisc, where music is recorded in a single stream of bytes while the TOC contains pointers to track positions, allows for gapless playback of music, something which competing portable players such as most MP3 players, fail to implement properly. Notable exceptions are CD players, as well as all recent iPods . At

1428-627: A few hundred dollars. Some DAPs have FM radio tuners built in. Many also have an option to change the band from the usual 87.5 – 108.0 MHz to the Japanese band of 76.0 – 90.0 MHz. DAPs typically never have an AM band, or even HD Radio since such features would be either cost-prohibitive for the application, or because of AM's sensitivity to interference. Newer portable media players are now coming with Internet access via Wi-Fi . Examples of such devices are Android OS devices by various manufacturers, and iOS devices on Apple products like

1530-541: A few months after the MPMan, and also featured a 32 MB storage capacity. It was a success during the holiday season, with sales exceeding expectations. Interest and investment in digital music were subsequently spurred from it. The RIAA soon filed a lawsuit alleging that the device abetted illegal copying of music, but Diamond won a legal victory on the shoulders of Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. and MP3 players were ruled legal devices. Because of

1632-499: A given media player is followed by an increase in the number, for example an MP5 or MP12 Player, despite there being no such corresponding MPEG standards. iriver of South Korea originally made portable CD players and then started making digital audio players and portable media players in 2002. Creative also introduced the ZEN line. Both of these attained high popularity in some regions. In 2004, Microsoft attempted to take advantage of

1734-708: A higher level of performance than previous magneto-optical drives. LIMDOW drives that shipped in the second half of 1997 has search speeds of less than 15 ms and data transfer rates in excess of 4 Mbit/s, which are fast enough for storing audio and streaming MPEG-2 video. Magneto-optical drives were first offered in NeXT computers. They were later also offered in Canon products. Sony MiniDiscs are magneto-optical, and Sony produces many other formats of magneto-optical media. As of August 2021 , Sony continues to manufacture one type of blank MiniDisc available only in Japan;

1836-564: A loyal customer base largely of musicians and audio enthusiasts, the MiniDisc met with only limited success in the United States. It was very popular in Japan and parts of Asia, and relatively so in Europe during the 1990s and into the 2000s, but did not enjoy comparable sales success in other markets. Since then, recordable CDs, flash memory and HDD and solid-state-based digital audio players such as iPods have become increasingly popular as playback devices. The slow uptake of MiniDisc

1938-434: A new phenomenon, magnetization melting by photoinduced photoconductors, was discovered in magnetic photoconductors. It was demonstrated that extremely low light intensities in the range of 1 μWcm can be used to read/write magnetic information in femtosecond (10 s timescales) allowing high-speed, high-density data storage in principle. MP3 players A portable media player ( PMP ) or digital audio player ( DAP )

2040-413: A popular standard format and as a result most digital audio players after this supported it and hence were often called MP3 players . While popularly being called MP3 players at the time, most players could play more than just the MP3 file format. Players also sometimes supported Windows Media Audio (WMA), Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), Vorbis , FLAC , Speex and Ogg . The first portable MP3 player

2142-473: A spartan user interface and a smaller form factor, the iPod was initially popular within the Macintosh community. In July 2002, Apple introduced the second generation update to the iPod, which was compatible with Windows computers through Musicmatch Jukebox . iPods quickly became the most popular DAP product and led the fast growth of this market during the early and mid 2000s. In 2002, Archos released

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2244-533: A spin-off of Maxtor Corp., was a major manufacturer of 130 mm or 5.25" magneto-optical drives. A current model is the T7-9100 drive, which has a maximum capacity of 9.1 GB and is downward read and write compatible with 5.2 GB, 4.8 GB, 4.1 GB, 2.6 GB, and 2.3 GB magneto-optical disks, and read compatible with 1.3 GB, 1.2 GB, 650 MB, and 600 MB magneto-optical disks. Popular older models of 5.25" Maxoptix MO drives are

2346-602: A year after the introduction of the compact disc , Kees Schouhamer Immink and Joseph Braat presented the first experiments with erasable magneto-optical compact discs during the 73rd AES Convention in Eindhoven . The technology was introduced commercially in 1985. Although optical, they normally appear as hard disk drives to an operating system and can be formatted with any file system . Magneto-optical drives were common in some countries, such as Japan, but have fallen into disuse. Early drives are 130 mm and have

2448-549: Is a further development of the MiniDisc format. Hi-MD media will not play on non-Hi-MD equipment, including NetMD players. The Hi-MD format, introduced in 2004, marked a return to the data storage arena with its 1 GB discs and ability to act as a USB drive . Hi-MD units allow the recording and playback of audio and data on the same disc, and can write both audio and data to standard MiniDisc media – an 80-minute MiniDisc blank could be formatted to store 305 MB of data. Modes marked in green are available for recordings made on

2550-687: Is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored on a compact disc (CD), Digital Versatile Disc (DVD), Blu-ray Disc (BD), flash memory , microdrive , SD cards or hard disk drive ; most earlier PMPs used physical media, but modern players mostly use flash memory. In contrast, analogue portable audio players play music from non-digital media that use analogue media , such as cassette tapes or vinyl records . Digital audio players (DAP) were often marketed as MP3 players even if they also supported other file formats and media types. The PMP term

2652-430: Is fixed in a cartridge (68×72×5 mm) with a sliding door, similar to the casing of a 3.5" floppy disk . This shutter is opened automatically when inserted into a drive. MiniDiscs can either be blank or prerecorded. Recordable MiniDiscs use a magneto-optical system to write data: a laser below the disc heats a spot to its Curie point , making the material in the disc susceptible to a magnetic field. A magnetic head above

2754-436: Is heated up to one temperature; but if it is heated up further, it will take its polarity from the other magnetic layer. To write the data onto the disk, the magneto-optical drive's laser pulses between two powers. At high power, the surface heats up more and takes its magnetic charge from the north pole magnetic layer. At the lower power, it heats up less and takes its magnetic charge from the south pole layer. Thus, with LIMDOW

2856-454: Is increased to heat the material to the Curie point in a single spot. This enables an electromagnet positioned on the opposite side of the disc to change the local magnetic polarization. The polarization is retained after the temperature drops. Each write cycle requires both a pass to erase a region and another pass to write information. Both passes use the laser to heat the recording layer;

2958-932: Is nearest competitor in 2006 being SanDisk . Apple also led in Japan over its homegrown makers Sony and Panasonic during this time, although the gap between Apple and Sony had closed by about 2010. In South Korea, the market was led by local brands iriver , Samsung and Cowon as of 2005. European buying patterns differed; while Apple was in a particularly strong position in the United Kingdom, continental Western Europe generally preferred cheaper, often Chinese rebranded players under local brands such as Grundig . Meanwhile, in Eastern Europe including Russia, higher priced players with improved design or functionality were preferred instead, and here Korean makers like iriver and Samsung were particularly popular, as well as such OEM models under local brands. Creative

3060-527: Is split in half over both sides of the disk. The 2.6 GB disks, for example, have a formatted capacity of 1.2 GB per side. The 130 mm drives were always SCSI . The 90 mm discs had their entire capacity on one side, with no capability to flip them over. The 90 mm drives were produced in SCSI, IDE, and USB formats. Capacities range from 128 MB to 2.3 GB. While they were never particularly popular with consumers (the main consumer market

3162-559: Is used to follow the optical tracks, while a magnetic head touches the recording surface. The drives can also read and write traditional 3.5" diskettes, although not the 2.88 megabyte variety. Flopticals were manufactured by Insite Peripherals, a company founded by Jim Burke. At the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2004, Sony revealed a 1 gigabyte capacity MiniDisc called Hi-MD . Its recorders can also double

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3264-552: Is written without any concurrent data integrity checking. Using a magneto-optical disc is much more like using a diskette drive than a CD-RW drive. During a read cycle, the laser is operated at a lower power setting, emitting polarized light. The reflected light has a change in Kerr rotation and Kerr ellipticity which is measured by an analyzer and corresponds to either a logical 0 or 1. The 130 mm drives have been available in capacities from 650 MB to 9.2 GB. However, this

3366-504: The EU , demand for MP3 players peaked in 2007 with 43.5 million devices sold totalling 3.8 billion euros. Both sales and revenue experienced a double-digit shrinkage for the first time in 2010. In India, sales of PMPs decreased for the first time in 2012, a few years after developed economies. The market was led by Apple with a share of about 50%, while Sony and Philips were the other major brands. Meanwhile, sales of Apple's best selling product,

3468-516: The Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC). Audio files purchased from online stores may include digital rights management (DRM) copy protection, which many modern players support. The JPEG format is widely supported by players. Some players, like the iPod series, provide compatibility to display additional file formats like GIF , PNG , and TIFF , while others are bundled with conversion software. Most newer players support

3570-554: The MPEG-4 Part 2 video format, and many other players are compatible with Windows Media Video (WMV) and AVI . Software included with the players may be able to convert video files into a compatible format. Many players have a built-in electret microphone which allows recording. Usually recording quality is poor, suitable for speech but not music. There are also professional-quality recorders suitable for high-quality music recording with external microphones, at prices starting at

3672-703: The Philips Compact Cassette analog audio tape system: the other was the Digital Compact Cassette (DCC), created by Philips and Matsushita (now Panasonic). Sony had originally intended the Digital Audio Tape (DAT) to be the dominant home digital audio recording format, replacing the analog cassette. Because of technical delays, the DAT was not launched until 1989, and by then the U.S. dollar had fallen so far against

3774-539: The Sansa line of players, starting with the e100 series, and then following up with the m200 series, and c100 series. In 2007, Apple introduced the iPod Touch , the first iPod with a multi-touch screen. Some similar products existed before such as the iriver clix in 2006. In South Korea, sales of MP3 players peaked in 2006, but started declining afterwards. This was driven partly by the launch of mobile television services (DMB), which along with increased demand of movies on

3876-553: The Windows 95 and NT operating systems, which did not have native support for USB connections. In 1999 the first hard drive based DAP using a 2.5" laptop drive, the Personal Jukebox (PJB-100) designed by Compaq and released by Hango Electronics Co with 4.8 GB storage, which held about 1,200 songs, and pioneered what would be called the jukebox segment of digital music portables. This segment eventually became

3978-527: The iPhone , iPod Touch , and iPad . Internet access has even enabled people to use the Internet as an underlying communications layer for their choice of music for automated music randomisation services like Pandora , to on-demand video access (which also has music available) such as YouTube. This technology has enabled casual and hobbyist DJs to cue their tracks from a smaller package from an Internet connection, sometimes they will use two identical devices on

4080-400: The yen that the introductory DAT machine Sony had intended to market for about $ 400 in the late 1980s then had to retail for $ 800 or even $ 1,000 to break even, putting it out of reach of most users. Relegating DAT to professional use, Sony set to work to come up with a simpler, more economical digital home format. By the time Sony came up with the MiniDisc in late 1992, Philips had introduced

4182-477: The 2000s. Other non-phone products such as the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita have also been considered to be PMPs. DAPs and PMPs have declined in popularity after the late 2000s due to increasing worldwide adoption of smartphones that already come with PMP functionalities. Sales peaked in 2007 and market revenue (worth $ 21.6 billion) peaked in 2008, albeit notably mobile phones that could play music outsold DAPs by almost three to one as of 2007. In

MiniDisc - Misplaced Pages Continue

4284-562: The CW100, under the brand name iAUDIO . In December 2000, some months after the Creative's NOMAD Jukebox , Archos released its Jukebox 6000 with a 6 GB hard drive. Philips also released a player called the Rush. On 23 October 2001, Apple unveiled the first generation iPod , a 5 GB hard drive based DAP with a 1.8" hard drive and a 2" monochrome display. With the development of

4386-574: The SCMS on the Digital Compact Cassette where analogue recording was marked as "unprotected"). In recorders that could be connected to a PC via USB , it was possible to transfer audio from the PC to the MiniDisc recorder, but for many years it was not possible to transfer audio in the other direction. This restriction existed in both the SonicStage software and in the MiniDisc player itself. SonicStage V3.4

4488-590: The South Korean giant Samsung Electronics . Sony entered the digital audio player market in 1999 with the Vaio Music Clip and Memory Stick Walkman , however they were technically not MP3 players as it did not support the MP3 format but instead Sony's own ATRAC format and WMA . The company's first MP3-supporting Walkman player did not come until 2004. Over the years, various hard-drive-based and flash-based DAPs and PMPs have been released under

4590-501: The T6 Star, T6-5200 and T5-2600 MO drives. Maxoptix was acquired by Techware Distribution in 2008. Fujitsu was a major manufacturer of 90 mm magneto-optical drives, exceeding 2 GB in capacity, but they have discontinued production and sale of this product category. PDO Konica Minolta was the last manufacturer of 90 mm 3.5" magneto-optical drives. They had a 3.5" 1.3 GB USB external pocket drive available for sale in

4692-481: The US. However, in 1988 Kramer's failure to raise the £60,000 required to renew the patent meant it entered the public domain. Apple Inc. hired Kramer as a consultant and presented his work as an example of prior art in the field of digital audio players during their litigation with Burst.com almost two decades later. In 2008, Apple acknowledged Kramer as the inventor of the digital audio player The Listen Up Player

4794-421: The United States and Europe. Magneto-optical drives are not Floptical drives, which likewise combine ferromagnetic and optical technologies, albeit in a different manner. Flopticals are 21 megabyte 3.5" magnetic diskettes using optical tracks to increase the tracking precision of the magnetic head, from the usual 135 tracks per inch to 1,250 tracks per inch. No laser or heating is involved; a simple infrared LED

4896-624: The Walkman range. The Samsung YEPP line was first released in 1999 with the aim of making the smallest music players on the market. In 2000, Creative released the 6 GB hard-drive-based Creative NOMAD Jukebox. The name borrowed the jukebox metaphor popularised by Remote Solution , also used by Archos . Later players in the Creative NOMAD range used microdrives rather than laptop drives. In October 2000, South Korean software company Cowon Systems released their first MP3 player,

4998-552: The ability to download music to FlashPAC. AAC and such music downloading services later formed the foundation for the Apple iPod and iTunes. The first production-volume portable digital audio player was The Audible Player (also known as MobilePlayer, or Digital Words To Go) from Audible.com available for sale in January 1998, for $ 200. It only supported playback of digital audio in Audible's proprietary, low-bitrate format which

5100-441: The analog Compact Cassette , MiniDisc is a random-access medium, making seek time very fast. MiniDiscs can be edited very quickly even on portable machines. Tracks can be split, combined, moved or deleted with ease either on the player or uploaded to a PC with Sony's SonicStage V4.3 software and edited there. Transferring data from an MD unit to a non-Windows PC can only be done in real time, preferably via optical I/O, by connecting

5202-511: The ancestors of digital audio players such as the Apple iPod. There are several types of MP3 players: British scientist Kane Kramer invented the first digital audio player, which he called the IXI . His 1979 prototypes were capable of up to one hour of audio playback but did not enter commercial production. His UK patent application was not filed until 1981 and was issued in 1985 in the UK and 1987 in

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5304-594: The audio out port of the MD to an available audio in port of the computer. With the release of the Hi-MD format, Sony began to use Mac OS X -compatible software. However, the Mac OS X-compatible software was still not compatible with legacy MD formats (SP, LP2, LP4). This means that an MD recorded on a legacy unit or in a legacy format still requires a Windows PC for faster than real-time transfers. The beginning of

5406-463: The capacity of regular MiniDiscs with special formatting that renders the disc incompatible with other recorders. As with all removable storage media, the advent of cheap CD and DVD drives and flash memory has made them largely obsolete. Magneto-optical disks in particular were expensive when new, with high reliability but slow writing. Magnetic tape formats like LTO have far surpassed MO media for high capacity enterprise-grade backup storage. In 2016

5508-514: The cheapest 80-minute MiniDisc blanks. The biggest competition for MiniDisc came with the emergence of MP3 players . With the Diamond Rio player in 1998 and the Apple iPod in 2001, the mass market began to eschew physical media in favor of more convenient file-based systems. By 2007, because of the waning popularity of the format and the increasing popularity of solid-state MP3 players, Sony

5610-603: The considerably more expensive data blanks. It did see some success in a small number of multi-track recorders such as Sony's MDM-X4, Tascam's 564 (which could also record using standard audio MD discs, albeit only two tracks), and Yamaha's MD8, MD4, & MD4S. In 1997, MD Data2 blanks were introduced with 650 MB. They were only implemented in Sony's short-lived MD-based camcorder, the DCM-M1. In 2000, Sony announced MDLP (MiniDisc Long Play), which added new recording modes based on

5712-488: The disc has a table of contents (TOC, the System File area), which stores the start positions of the various tracks, as well as metadata (title, artist) and free blocks. Unlike a conventional cassette, a recorded song does not need to be stored as one piece on the disc, it can be scattered in fragments, similar to a hard drive. Early MiniDisc equipment had a fragment granularity of 4 seconds of audio. Fragments smaller than

5814-482: The disc then alters the polarity of the heated area, recording the digital data onto the disk. Playback is accomplished with the laser alone: taking advantage of the magneto-optic Kerr effect , the player senses the polarization of the reflected light as a 1 or a 0. Recordable MDs can be rerecorded repeatedly, with Sony claiming up to one million times. By May 2005, there were 60-minute, 74-minute and 80-minute discs available. 60-minute blanks, which were widely available in

5916-659: The dominant type of digital music player. Also at the end of 1999 the first in-dash MP3 player appeared. The Empeg Car offered players in several capacities ranging from 5 to 28 GB. The unit did not catch on and was discontinued in the fall of 2001. For the next couple of years, there were offerings from South Korean companies, namely the startups iRiver (brand of Reigncom), Mpio (brand of DigitalWay) and Cowon . At its peak, these Korean makers held as much as 40% world market share in MP3 players. These manufacturers however lost their way after 2004 as they failed to compete with new iPods . By 2006 they were also overtaken by

6018-480: The early years of the format's introduction, were phased out. MiniDiscs use a mastering process and optical playback system that is very similar to CDs. The recorded signal of the premastered pits and of the recordable MD are also very similar. Eight-to-Fourteen Modulation (EFM) and a modification of CD's CIRC code, called Advanced Cross Interleaved Reed-Solomon Code (ACIRC) are employed. MiniDiscs use rewritable magneto-optical storage to store data. Unlike DCC or

6120-414: The end of recording, after the "Stop" button has been pressed, the MiniDisc may continue to write music data for a few seconds from its memory buffers. During this time, it may display a message ("Data Save", on at least some models) and the case will not open. After the audio data is written out, the final step is to write the TOC track denoting the start and endpoints of the recorded data. Sony points out in

6222-531: The first PMP, the Archos Jukebox Multimedia with a little 1.5" colour screen. The next year, Archos released another multimedia jukebox , the AV300 , with a 3.8" screen and a 20 GB hard drive. In the same year, Toshiba released the first Gigabeat . In 2003, Dell launched a line of portable digital music players called Dell DJ . They were discontinued by 2006. The name MP4 player

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6324-629: The format. On 1 February 2013, Sony issued a press release on the Nikkei stock exchange that it would cease shipment of all MD devices, with last of the players to be sold in March 2013. However, it would continue to sell blank discs and offer repair services. Other manufacturers continued to release MiniDisc players long after Sony stopped, with TEAC & TASCAM producing new decks up until 2020 when both its consumer and professional products, TEAC MD-70CD and TASCAM MD-CD1MKIII, were discontinued. The disc

6426-460: The globe and by 2005, more than half of all music sold in South Korea was sold directly to mobile phones and all major handset makers in the world had released MP3 playing phones. By 2006, more MP3 playing mobile phones were sold than all stand-alone MP3 players put together. The rapid rise of the media player in phones was quoted by Apple as a primary reason for developing the iPhone . In 2007,

6528-410: The go led to a transition away from music-only players to PMPs. By 2008, more video-enabled PMPs were sold than audio-only players. By the mid-2000s and the years after, Apple with its iPod was the best-selling DAP or PMP by a significant margin, with one of out four sold worldwide being an iPod. It was especially dominant in the United States where it had over 70% of sales at different points in time,

6630-493: The granularity are not monitored, which may lead to the usable capacity of a disc shrinking over time. No means of defragmenting the disc is provided in consumer-grade equipment. All consumer-grade MiniDisc devices have a copy-protection scheme called the Serial Copy Management System . An unprotected disc or song can be copied without limit, but the copies can no longer be digitally copied. However, as

6732-729: The growing PMP market by launching the Portable Media Center (PMC) platform. It was introduced at the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show with the announcement of the Zen Portable Media Center , which was co-developed by Creative . The Microsoft Zune series would later be based on the Gigabeat S , one of the PMC-implemented players. In May 2005, flash memory maker SanDisk entered the PMP market with

6834-433: The head or the body; i.e. to add more memory). Today, every smartphone also serves as a portable media player; however, prior to the rise of smartphones in the 2007–2012 time frame, a variety of handheld players were available to store and play music. The immediate predecessor to the portable media player was the portable CD player and prior to that, the personal stereo . In particular, Sony 's Walkman and Discman are

6936-481: The iPod, were eclipsed by the iPhone in 2011. DAPs continue to be made in lower volumes by manufacturers such as SanDisk, Sony, IRIVER, Philips, Apple, Cowon, and a range of Chinese manufacturers namely Aigo, Newsmy, PYLE and ONDA. They often have specific selling points in the smartphone era, such as portability (for small sized players) or for high quality sound suited for audiophiles . PMPs are capable of playing digital audio , images , and/or video . Usually,

7038-454: The last of the players by March 2013. In 1983, just a year after the introduction of the compact disc , Kees Schouhamer Immink and Joseph Braat presented the first experiments with erasable magneto-optical compact discs during the 73rd AES Convention in Eindhoven . It took almost 10 years, however, before their idea was commercialized. Sony's MiniDisc was one of two rival digital systems introduced in 1992 that were intended to replace

7140-755: The late 1990s following the creation of the MP3 codec in Germany. MP3-playing devices were mostly pioneered by South Korean startups, who by 2002 would control the majority of global sales. However the industry would eventually be defined by the popular Apple iPod . In 2006, 20% of Americans owned a PMP, a figure strongly driven by the young; more than half (54%) of American teens owned one, as did 30% of young adults aged 18 to 34. In 2007, 210 million PMPs were sold worldwide, worth US$ 19.5 billion. In 2008, video-enabled players would overtake audio-only players. Increasing sales of smartphones and tablet computers have led to

7242-426: The magnetic field is used to change the magnetic orientation of the recording layer. The electromagnet reverses polarity for writing, and the laser is pulsed to record spots of "1" over the erased region of "0". As a result of this two-pass process, it takes twice as long to write data as it does to read it. In 1990, a 300 mm disc with 7 GB capacity was made available. In 1996, Direct Overwrite technology

7344-411: The magneto-optical write process has a single stage, improving write times. Because the magnetic surface is adjacent to the writing surface, rather than somewhere outside the disk itself, the magnetic writing can be done at a higher resolution, including that of the resolution of the laser spot doing the heating up. In the spring of 1997 Plasmon launched its DW260 drive, which used LIMDOW technology for

7446-592: The manual that the power should not be interrupted or the unit exposed to undue physical shock during this time. All MiniDisc recorders use the SCMS copy protection system which uses two bits in the S/PDIF digital audio stream and on disc to differentiate between "protected" vs. "unprotected" audio, and between "original" vs. "copy": Recording from an analogue source resulted in a disc marked "protected" and "original" allowing one further copy to be made (this contrasts with

7548-476: The new codec ATRAC3. In addition to the standard, high-quality mode, now called SP, MDLP adds LP2 mode, which doubles the recording time – 160 minutes on an 80-minute disc – of good-quality stereo sound, and LP4, which allows four times more recording time – 320 minutes on an 80-minute disc – of medium-quality stereo sound. The bitrate of the standard SP mode is 292  kbit/s , and it uses separate stereo coding with discrete left and right channels. LP2 mode uses

7650-563: The new technology, and instead young startups would come to dominate the early era of MP3 players. Other early MP3 portables included the Creative Labs Nomad and the RCA Lyra . These portables were small and light, but had only enough memory to hold around 7 to 20 songs at normal 128 kbit/s compression rates. They also used slower parallel port connections to transfer files from PC to player, necessary as most PCs then used

7752-427: The number of phones that could play media was over 1 billion. Some companies have created music-centric sub-brands for mobile phones, for example the former Sony Ericsson 's Walkman range or Nokia 's XpressMusic range, which have extra emphasis on music playback and typically have features such as dedicated music buttons. Mobile phones with PMP functionalities such as video playback also started appearing in

7854-403: The option of linear PCM digital recording to meet audio quality comparable to that of a compact disc . MiniDiscs were very popular in Japan and found moderate success in Europe. Although it was designed to succeed the cassette tape , it did not manage to supplant it globally. By March 2011 Sony had sold 22 million MD players, but halted further development. Sony ceased manufacturing and sold

7956-425: The original ATRAC (except for playback only). MiniDisc has a feature that prevents disc skipping under all but the most extreme conditions. Older CD players had been a source of annoyance to users as they were prone to mistracking from vibration and shock. MiniDisc solved this problem by reading the data into a memory buffer at a higher speed than was required before being read out to the digital-to-analog converter at

8058-587: The original audio. Early players are guaranteed to play later version ATRAC audio. Version 1 could only be copied on consumer equipment three or four times before artifacts became objectionable, as the ATRAC on the recorder attempted to compress the already compressed data. By version 4, the potential number of generations of copy had increased to around 15 to 20 depending on audio content. The latest versions of Sony's ATRAC are ATRAC3 and ATRAC3plus. Original ATRAC3 at 132 kbit/s (also known as ATRAC-LP2 mode)

8160-513: The player's notoriety as the target of a major lawsuit, the Rio is erroneously assumed to be the first digital audio player. Eiger Labs and Diamond went on to establish a new segment in the portable audio player market and the following year saw several new manufacturers enter this market. The PMP300 would be the start of the Rio line of players. Noticeably, major technology companies did not catch on with

8262-511: The player, while those marked in red are available for music transferred from a PC. Capacities are official Sony figures; real world figures are usually slightly higher. Native MP3 support was added in second-generation Hi-MD players in the spring of 2005. SonicStage version 3.4, released in Feb 2006, introduced ripping CDs in bitrates 320 and 352 and added track transfer in ATRAC 192 kbit/s to Hi-MD devices. Magneto-optical In 1983, just

8364-561: The presence of file fragmentation . The data structure and operation of a MiniDisc is similar to that of a computer's hard disk drive. The bulk of the disc contains audio data, and a small section contains the table of contents (TOC), providing the playback device with vital information about the number and location of tracks on the disc. Tracks and discs can be named. Tracks may easily be added, erased, combined and divided, and their preferred order of playback modified. Erased tracks are not physically erased, but are only marked as deleted. When

8466-472: The quality of the music is that of LP2 but recorded as SP. NetMD is a proprietary protocol that initially required proprietary software such as SonicStage . A free *nix based implementation, libnetmd, has been developed. The library allows the user to upload SP files in full quality. In 2019, a programmer named Stefano Brilli compiled the linux-minidisc CLI into a web browser-based application, allowing users to transfer music via USB on modern devices. Hi-MD

8568-422: The recordable compact disc ( CD-R ) when it became more affordable to consumers beginning around 1996. Initially, Sony believed that it would take around a decade for CD-R prices to become affordable – the cost of a typical blank CD-R disc was around $ 12 in 1994 – but CD-R prices fell much more rapidly than envisioned, to the point where CD-R blanks sank below $ 1 per disc by the late 1990s, compared to at least $ 2 for

8670-660: The rest of the world only has access to dwindling new stock from vendors on sites such as eBay or Amazon. TEAC & TASCAM continued to manufacture MiniDisc decks up until 2020 while Sony ceased production of hardware in 2013. Pinnacle Micro was a major manufacturer of magneto-optical drives. 3.5" drives were 128 MB and 230 MB. 5.25" drives produced were 650 MB and 1.3 GB (Sierra), 2.6 GB (Vertex) and 4.6 GB (Apex). The Vertex and Apex were non-ISO standard drives and used proprietary media. Pinnacle Micro has ceased production of these products. LMSI produced 5.25" magneto-optical drives as well. Maxoptix,

8772-426: The same basic principle as a standard magneto-optical drive: the write surface is heated up and took on a magnetic force applied from outside. But instead of using a magnetic head in the drive to make the changes, the magnets were built into the disk itself. The LIMDOW disk has two magnetic layers just behind the reflective writing surface. This write surface can take magnetism from one of those magnetic layers when it

8874-576: The size of full-height 130 mm hard-drives (like in the IBM PC XT ). 130 mm media looks similar to a CD-ROM enclosed in an old-style caddy , while 90 mm media is about the size of a regular 3 1 ⁄ 2 -inch floppy disk , but twice the thickness. The cases provide dust resistance, and the drives themselves have slots constructed in such a way that they always appear to be closed. Original MO systems were WORM (write once, read many), and later systems were read/write. The disc consists of

8976-466: The standard rate of the format. The size of the buffer varies by model. If a MiniDisc player is bumped, playback continues unimpeded while the laser repositions itself to continue reading data from the disc. This feature allows the player to stop the spindle motor for significant periods, increasing battery life. A buffer of at least six seconds is required on all MiniDisc players, whether portable or full-sized units. This ensures uninterrupted playback in

9078-543: The time) high storage capacity were required. The optical libraries could also manually be used on a Windows 2000/XP machine by selecting and ejecting discs under the Computer Management icon's Removable Storage Service, but this is cumbersome in practice. Light Intensity Modulated Direct OverWrite (LIMDOW) technology used a different write technology, which improved on the performance levels of earlier magneto-optical devices. LIMDOW disks and drives worked on

9180-480: The user the song currently playing. The first car audio hard drive-based MP3 player was also released in 1997 by MP32Go and was called the MP32Go Player. It consisted of a 3 GB IBM 2.5" hard drive that was housed in a trunk-mounted enclosure connected to the car's radio system. It retailed for $ 599 and was a commercial failure. The Rio PMP300 from Diamond Multimedia was introduced in September 1998,

9282-416: Was a marketing term for inexpensive portable media players, usually from little-known or generic device manufacturers. The name itself is a misnomer , since most MP4 players through 2007 were incompatible with the MPEG-4 Part 14 or the .mp4 container format. Instead, the term refers to their ability to play more file types than just MP3. In this sense, in some markets like Brazil, any new function added to

9384-424: Was attributed to the small number of pre-recorded albums available on MD, because relatively few record labels embraced the format. The initial high cost of equipment and blank media was also a factor. Additionally, home MiniDisc decks were less widely available, with most consumers instead connecting a portable MD device to their hi-fi system in order to record. MiniDisc technology was faced with new competition from

9486-452: Was developed for spoken word recordings. Capacity was limited to 4 MB of internal flash memory, or about 2 hours of play, using a custom rechargeable battery pack. The unit had no display and rudimentary controls. MP3 was introduced as an audio coding standard in 1992. It was based on several audio data compression techniques, including the modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT), FFT and psychoacoustic methods. MP3 became

9588-483: Was introduced for 90 mm discs eliminating the initial erase pass when writing. This requires special media. By default, magneto-optical drives verify information after writing it to the disc, and are able to immediately report any problems to the operating system. This means writing can actually take three times longer than reading, but it makes the media extremely reliable, unlike the CD-R or DVD-R media upon which data

9690-510: Was introduced later for devices that had additional capabilities such as video playback. Generally speaking, they are portable, employing internal or replaceable batteries , equipped with a 3.5 mm headphone jack which can be used for headphones or to connect to a boombox , shelf stereo system, or connect to car audio and home stereos wired or via a wireless connection such as Bluetooth . Some players also include radio tuners , voice recording and other features. DAPs appeared in

9792-529: Was launched in 1997 by SaeHan Information Systems , which sold its MPMan F10 player in South Korea in spring 1998. In mid-1998, the South Korean company licensed the players for North American distribution to Eiger Labs, which rebranded them as the EigerMan F10 and F20. The flash-based players were available in 32 MB or 64 MB (6 or 12 songs) storage capacity and had a LCD screen to tell

9894-1022: Was producing only one model, the Hi-MD MZ-RH1, available as the MZ-M200 in North America packaged with a Sony microphone and limited macOS software support. The MZ-RH1 allowed users to freely move uncompressed digital recordings back and forth from the MiniDisc to a computer without the copyright protection limitations previously imposed upon the NetMD series. This allowed the MiniDisc to better compete with HD recorders and MP3 players. However, most pro users like broadcasters and news reporters had already abandoned MiniDisc in favor of solid-state recorders, because of their extended recording time, open digital content sharing, high-quality digital recording capabilities and reliable, lightweight design. On 7 July 2011, Sony announced that it would no longer ship MiniDisc Walkman products as of September 2011, effectively killing

9996-547: Was released in 1996 by Audio Highway, an American company led by Nathan Schulhof . It could store up to an hour of music, but despite getting an award at CES 1997 only 25 of the devices were made. That same year AT&T developed the FlashPAC digital audio player which initially used AT&T's Perceptual Audio Coder (PAC) for music compression, but in 1997 switched to AAC . At about the same time AT&T also developed an internal Web-based music streaming service that had

10098-581: Was the 90 mm drives), the 130 mm drives had some lasting service in corporate storage and retrieval. Optical libraries, such as the Hewlett Packard 40XT, were created to automate loading and storing of the disks. A self-contained unit holding 16 or more disks and connected by SCSI to a host computer, the library required specialized archival software to store indices of data, and select disks. Popular uses were for legal document storage and medical imaging, where high reliability, long life, and (at

10200-412: Was the first version of the software where this restriction was removed, but it still required a MiniDisc recorder/player that also had the restriction removed. The Hi-MD model MZ-RH1 was the only such player available. MD Data, a format for storing computer data, was announced by Sony in 1993. Its media were generally incompatible with standard audio MiniDiscs. MD Data can not write to audio MDs, but only

10302-413: Was the format that was used by Sony's defunct Connect audio download store. ATRAC3plus was not used in order to retain backwards compatibility with earlier NetMD players. In the MiniDisc's final iteration, Hi-MD, uncompressed CD-quality linear PCM audio recording and playback is offered, placing Hi-MD on par with CD-quality audio. Hi-MD also supports both ATRAC3 and ATRAC3plus at various bitrates, but not

10404-477: Was the top-selling maker in its home country of Singapore. In China, local brands Newman, DEC and Aigo were noted as the top vendors as of 2006. Samsung SPH-M2100 , the first mobile phone with built-in MP3 player was produced in South Korea in August 1999. Samsung SPH-M100 (UpRoar) launched in 2000 was the first mobile phone to have MP3 music capabilities in the US market. The innovation spread rapidly across

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