Facts About Mp3 Player, Mp4 Player And iPod

The invention of the MP3 player, with MP4 player and iPod following it, has revolutionized the music industry. These lightweight, reasonably priced, portable music gadgets are almost everywhere you look. Earlier they used to be the obsession of the geeks, nerds and the electronic enthusiasts but today these players are a must have consumer electronic item for almost everyone whether it is the stay at house mom, working business executive, fitness freak joggers, teenagers or even the bored granddad.

MP3 player has personalized music like never before. The MP3 craze has reached its peak with people wanting more and more features in their players. What they want is to download their complete collection of music in their player. You can download and store more than thousands of songs inexpensively into your device and listen to it whenever you want; whether at office or at home or tolerating a boring lecture or even struggling past a heavy traffic jam. A music player seems to be in every hand nowadays. These are wireless, portable, wonders of music and entertainment that can store, systematize and play music on demand.

The three main types of digital audio players are MP3 CD Players that can play both data CDs and audio CDs with MP3 format files, Flash-based Players that are solid state devices with internal media or memory cards type external media and Digital Jukeboxes like the apple iPod and Creative Zen which can read digital audio files from a hard drive. These types of players are the most advanced in technology and have high memory ranging from 1.5 GigaByte to 100 GigaByte.

There is a myth regarding MP3 and MP4 player as Mp4 being a successor of Mp3 player, but these two are different things. Fundamentally, Mp3 is a specific category of audio format while Mp4 is actually a container format. But an Mp4 player can also play Mp3 files besides MP4 format files with complete clarity just like the original player.

The iPod was introduced by Apple Inc. and was launched in October 2001. The varieties of iPod available today include video fifth generation iPod, the small iPod nano and the display free iPod shuffle. You can use Apple`s iTunes software to transfer music of your choice to the devices. An iPod supports and plays MP3, AAC, AIFF, Protected AAC, WAV and some other audio file formats. The Apple iPod also has some additional features like displaying text files, viewing contacts and synchronizing it with the host computer, gaming facilities like the Brick, solitaire, Parachute and Music Quiz. A lot of accessories have been made for the iPod such as sound recorders, wired remote control, FM radio tuners, and cables for enabling TV connections.

iPods have often been criticized due to their short life-span, delicate hard drives.There are also some health risks associated with frequent use of these players which can lead to loss in audio capacity and can also lead to absent mindedness.

All of these music players are portable and use either a semi-permanent rechargeable battery or conventional batteries that can be disposed or recharged. Some MP3 / MP4 players also have additional features like playing FM stations, games, microphone for voice recording, address storage book and etc.

The MP3 player have created a huge mass hysteria amongst some age groups leading to many companies joining the bandwagon to design and market different types of MP3, MP4 players and iPods. It has also given rise to an entirely new industry of downloading sites. This heavy competition has forced companies to find new and innovative use of these players like incorporating features like camera, mobile and etc.

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Do You Know The Ipod Clock Radio

There is little doubt that the iPod clock radio is one of the many features that has propelled the Apple MP3 player line to the amazing success it has had. It seems that Apple has thought of almost any accessory or add-on that the consumer could want, and all of them offer the typical high quality sound equipment that Apple iPod lovers have come to expect. The iPod clock radio is no exception to the rule. With its stylish design and lightweight durability this is a clock radio really worth having.

Selling at right around $100.00 US, the sleek design of the iPod clock radio makes it ideal for any type of home décor. It comes in two colors, white and black, with the front of the system designed for speaker space and an easy to read backlit display that gives the time with a backlight adjustment that can go from very dim to very bright. This is a great function for those that have difficulty sleeping with any type of light in the room, as well as for those that want to be able to clearly see the time at a quick glance.

The iPod clock radio has a dock for the iPod located directly behind the button controls for the AM/FM radio that are on the center top of the radio unit. Since the radio doubles as a docking station, the iPod batteries will be completely charged in the morning, even if you wish to program it to play softly all night. The adjustable sleep and wake up features allow you to choose the volume and length of time that the sleep unit will function before automatically shutting off. There is also a gradual wake feature that allows you to wake up to your favorite tunes. The radio also can serve as the wake up sound, or there is an optional buzzer or alarm that can be used as well. The volumes, when using the wake or sleep function, will gradually increase or decrease, allowing for a very natural wake up or sleep option.

In addition the iPod clock radio has a remote control that allows you to adjust the volume or any other features on the clock simply and without having to move. As with any other iPod accessory there are high quality stereo speakers built into the radio to give the same clear, high quality sound you would get if you were listening directly to your iPod. The iPod clock radio is one of the most popular of the larger iPod accessories and makes a great gift for yourself or your favorite music lover.

Cranking The Volume On Your Ipod Or Mp3 Player Can Damage Hearing

Kids have always loved listening to their favorite music, and the louder the better – much to their parents’ dismay. In the 1980s, the portable tape recorder with headphones – which came to be known as the “Walkman” – enabled teenagers to listen to their music as loud as they wanted, anywhere they wanted, without disturbing anyone around them.

But the more modern rendition of the Walkman – portable MP3 Players and iPods – pose a major threat to our children’s hearing health, and to ours.

The problem is a combination of the technology of portable digital devices that creates a non-buffered crystal clear sound, and the type of headphones typically used with them, which do not have a buffer either. In December 2005, Dean Garstecki, an audiologist and professor at Northwestern University reported that more and more young people were being diagnosed with the types of hearing loss typically found in older adults. He attributed this trend to the “earbud” type headphones that usually accompany iPod and MP3 Players.

With the earbud headphones, the sound frequencies are not buffered as they are with the more traditional, ear cup-style headsets. Newsweek Magazine recently reported that researchers at the House Ear Institute found that listeners can unfortunately increase the volume of today’s portable digital devices without the “signal distortion that occurs with traditional analog audio.” The older-model headphones that were popular just 15 to 20 years ago – that have ear cups outside of the ears – had that distortion when the volume was turned up, which functioned as a much-needed buffer to protect our hearing. Today’s technology does not provide that buffer – the earpiece is placed in the ear, not outside of it, and the digital devices do not create that distortion, no matter how high the volume.

In addition, people often listen to these devices while they are on the go, and have a tendency to crank the volume in an attempt to drown outside noise, further posing a risk to our hearing. Using the earbud style headphones during activities such as exercise, for example, puts the user at a greater risk. During exercise, blood, which can act as a buffer, is diverted from the ears to other parts of the body – so our already vulnerable hearing is in even more jeopardy.

Headwize reports that a study conducted on music listeners using headphones revealed that while indoors with no background noise, the participants were comfortable with their music at 69 decibels. Outdoors, where the background noise was recorded at 65 decibels, participants using their headphones turned the volume up to 82 decibels and as high as 95 decibels to drown out the surrounding noise. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration guidelines limit exposure to noise at this level to no more than four hours each day. The study concluded that the participants were at risk for hearing damage and recommended “avoiding continuous use of [portable stereos] in noisy conditions.”

Northwestern University’s Dean Garstecki offers more specific guidelines: His 60 percent/60 minute rule – listen to MP3 Players and iPods for “about an hour a day and at levels below 60 percent of maximum volume.” The problem is, most of the population using headphones – young music fans – listen to their music for much longer than one hour per day. But, you can help minimize hearing loss, damage and problems while listening to your favorite music as long as you want to – the secret is in the headphones.

Headphones such as the EX29 Extreme Isolation Noise Reduction Headphones help block out external noise allowing you to hear the fine details of your music without blowing out your ear drums. The ear cup fits over the ear, and not in it, and the headphones are lightweight, don’t require batteries and can be used with your MP3 Player or iPod. With 29 decibels of isolation from outside sound, the quiet headphones block outside noise and there is no need to crank the volume of your music.

Aging rock stars like the Who’s Pete Townsend, who has some permanent hearing loss from years of exposure to loud music, and Mick Fleetwood, who has teamed up with Energizer batteries to promote hearing loss prevention, have brought public attention to the fact that many of us take our hearing for granted. But there’s no need to turn off your music – just be smarter about how you listen to it. If you are using your MP3 Player or iPod when you’re exercising, in a noisy environment or you just want to hear the fine details of your music, ditch the earbud headphones and reach for a set of noise reduction ones instead. And you’ll be enjoying your favorite music for a long time to come.

Are You Getting The Most From Your Ipod Music Downloads?

Gone are the days where downloading music was a hassle and a problem. With new types of connections, including USB cables and FireWire, it couldn’t be easier to keep your music up to date and download the latest hits in a simple and problem-free fashion. Apple offers their iTunes website, which provides an amazing selection of songs from every imaginable genre of music.

The iTunes store boasts over three and a half million songs to choose from, and there are also podcasts, TV shows, movies, audiobooks and even iPod games if you are looking for more than just iPod music downloads. The iTunes store features the major music labels as well as music by independent artists, and once you buy the song from the store it is yours to use and play as often as you choose. There is no subscription to the store, rather you pay on a per-use basis, rather than a flat subscription rate plus additional costs for songs once the limit is reached. For some people that download a consistent number of songs the subscription option may be more cost effective, but it is important to carefully monitor your downloads as well as track your usage to avoid going over your download limit and ending up with penalty or over-usage fees.

The iTunes store also offers a handy download manager that allows you to establish and pre-set the order of the songs that you have selected for downloading. This saves a lot of play list set-up time after the download is complete. Simply browse through the music by category, artist or song titles, select what you wish to download and hit the button. Once the music has been downloaded all that is required is to connect the iPod to the computer using the USB cable or the FireWire connection and synchronize your iPod with the computer. Most of the docking station and cradles that hold the iPod during this process already have batteries or are charging your iPod so you don’t need to worry about running your play time down while you are synching your iPod. Some iPods, such as the Shuffle, allow for random selections of songs to give a unique play list every time, and even allows the listener to hear new music while still staying within a particular genre or music style.

The manual that comes with any new or refurbished iPod provides detailed information on how to complete and troubleshoot any issues with iPod music downloads. In addition the Apple website has videos and tutorials for each specific iPod player, which makes iPod music downloads and downloading easy and simple.

A Brief History Of Ipod

iPod is a digital mp3 / mp4 player developed and marketed by Apple Inc., an American consumer electronics multinational corporation. During their research, Apple found that in comparison to available camcorders, digital cameras, and organizers; digital music players recorded poor sales, primarily due to their awful user interfaces. Apple wanted to do something about it and so Jon Rubinstein, Apple's hardware engineering chief brought together a team comprising of Tony Fadell (who dreamed of a hard disk based music player), Michael Dhuey (hardware engineer), Jonathan Ive (design engineer), and Stan Ng (marketing manager). In less than a year, they designed a hard disk based music player, that had a 5 GB hard drive and capable of storing 1000 songs.

Apple's iTunes software is utilized to operate the iPod (m3 / mp4 player). The software is compatible with all Mac systems. The operating system is stored on its hard disk. A boot loader program is contained in a NOR flash ROM chip (either 1 MB or 512 KB) which instructs the device to load the operating system from the hard disk. The iPod has a 32 MB of RAM, a portion of which is used to hold the operating system from firmware, and the rest is used to cache songs from the hard disk. Apple also invented a technology whereby the hard disk of iPod could spin up once and about 30 MB of upcoming songs could be cached into the RAM. This did not require the hard disk to spin up for every song and thereby saved battery power. Apple also introduced a Windows version of iPod, at a later stage.

The audio files that iPod (mp3 / mp4 player) supports are MP3, AAC/M4A, Protected AAC, AIFF, WAV, Audible audiobook, and Apple Lossless audio file formats. MIDI and WMA files can be played only after a converter accomplishes conversion, for non-Digital Rights Management (DRM). Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and other open-source audio formats are not supported at all.

Apple wanted an extremely user friendly interface and thus adopted the minimalist interface, which features only five essential buttons, namely, Menu (to access functions and to toggle the backlight); Center (for menu item selection); Play/ Pause (this also works as an off switch when held for few seconds); Skip Forward/ Fast Forward; and Skip Backwards/ Fast Reverse. An additional Hold button is provided for accidental button pressing prevention, and it can reset the iPod if it has frozen or crashed. Functions such as volume control, scrolling are handled by the usage of the rotational click wheel. Later models have some minor changes in the functions of the buttons but overall the number of buttons has remained at five.

To market this path-breaking mp3 / mp4 player, they needed a suitable futuristic name and so they hired a freelance copywriter, Vinnie Chieco, and other writers to give a name. Inspired by the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and the dialogue "Open the pod bay door, Hal!" with reference to the context of the Discovery One spaceship and its white EVA Pods, Vinnie Chieco proposed the name of the product as iPod. The management of Apple accepted the proposed name and on 23 October 2001, the iPod was officially launched. The rest they say is history.

To enable customers to access songs of their choice, Apple opened up an online media store The iTunes Store on 29 April 2003, where individual songs could be downloaded at prices less than a U.S. dollar per song. The purchased songs can be played only on iPods. Subsequent versions of this iPod (mp3 / mp4 player) also featured video capabilities, and thus iTunes Store started selling short videos from 12 October 2005. From 12 September 2006, full-length movies were also available at the iTunes Store.

iPods have come a long way from their inception, and now the latest fifth generation iPods possess multimedia capabilities and are available in both Mac OS and Windows OS versions. Usually, if a new iPod is plugged into a Mac OS computer, then the hard disk of this mp3 / mp4 player is formatted as per the HFS+ file format, and if it plugged into a Windows OS computer, it is formatted as per the FAT32 file format. From being a digital music player, the iPod has now transformed into a digital media player.