Editing Portable audio player

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[[File:The End of Books - page 228a.jpg|thumb|250px|A personal mono device as science fiction (Albert Robida, 1894)]]
A '''portable audio player''' is a personal mobile device that allows the user to listen to recorded [[sound recording|audio]] while mobile. Sometimes a distinction is made between a ''portable'' player, battery-powered and with one or more small [[loudspeaker]]s, and a ''personal'' player, listened to with [[earphone]]s.

==History==
Portable battery-operated [[reel-to-reel tape recorder]]s were introduced in the 1950s,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Tape recorders for playing and recording sound |url=https://www.1900s.org.uk/1960s-tape-rec-r-ro-r.htm |access-date=2022-08-05 |website=www.1900s.org.uk}}</ref> initially tending to be high-priced units for reporters, produced by [[Uher (brand)|Uher]] and [[Nagra]]. Lower-priced units became available later. In the mid-1960s [[Philips]] introduced the battery-operated [[compact cassette]] recorder, originally used for recording speech. At about the same time the [[8-track cartridge|8-track]] player was introduced. It was very successful at the time, though bulky and inconvenient to use. There was a pause at the end of each track as the program changed. 
The compact cassette, although physically much smaller than the 8-track cartridge, became capable of good{{Clarify|date=August 2009}} sound quality as the technology developed, and longer cassette tapes became available. [[Cassette deck]]s (not portable) were introduced for home use, and this encouraged the production of pre-recorded music cassettes.{{Citation needed|date=August 2009}}

==Personal stereo==
{{Main|Personal stereo}}
[[Image:Panasonic Stero Cassette Player RQ-JA63.jpg|thumb|[[Panasonic]] Stereo Cassette Player RQ-JA63]]

The first portable audio player available to the general public, the [[Sony Walkman]], was introduced in 1979 and sold very well. It was much smaller than an 8-track player or the earlier cassette recorders, and was listened to with [[stereophonic]] [[headphones]], unlike previous equipment which used small loudspeakers. Unlike small loudspeakers, headphones were capable of very good sound quality. All previous compact cassette devices could record as well as play back; Walkmans and similar devices often had no recording facility, but took advantage of the pre-recorded cassettes that had become widely available.

==Disk players==
{{Main|Portable CD player}}
Early personal CD players can play commercial CDs; later models can play recordable [[CD-R]] and [[CDRW]] media either copied from a pressed CD or containing MP3 and similar files.{{Or|date=August 2009}}

==Media players== 
{{Main|Portable media player}} 
In 1998, digital audio players (DAPs) based on [[flash memory]] or [[hard disk]] storage became available (The [[Rio PMP300]] from Diamond Multimedia is widely considered to be the first mass market DAP). Files are usually compressed using [[lossy compression]]; this reduces file size at the cost of some loss of quality. The [[trade-off]] between degree of compression and file size can be varied, although this is not an option for existing compressed files. The advantage of solid-state DAPs over hard disks and CDs is resistance to vibration, small size and weight, and low battery usage. Early solid-state DAPs had capacities of a few tens of kilobytes; {{As of|2009|lc=on}} capacities of many gigabytes are available.{{Citation needed|date=August 2009}}

== See also ==
*[[Waterproof audio player]]

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

== Further reading ==
* Erlmann, Veit (ed.) [https://books.google.com/books?id=wRdj0p0BpBIC ''Hearing Cultures. Essays on Sound, Listening, and Modernity''], New York: Berg Publishers, 2004. Cf. Chapter 9: "Thinking About Sound, Proximity, and Distance in Western Experience: The Case of Odysseus's Walkman" by Michael Bull.

[[Category:Portable audio players| ]]
[[Category:Japanese inventions]]