Five things you didn’t know about… your MP3 Player


  • Audio Frequencies

    1. The first mass-produced one is 9 years old this year

    The world’s first mass-produced hardware MP3 player was Saehan’s MPMan, sold in Asia starting in the late spring of 1998.

    For more information see this news item.

    2. Suzanne Vega is its mother

    Singer songwriter Suzanne Vega is sometimes jokingly referred to as “the mother of MP3” because scientists used a CD recording of Suzanne Vega’s song “Tom’s Diner” to assess the MP3 compression algorithm.

    They chose the song because of its softness and simplicity, making it easier to hear imperfections in the compression format during playback.

    3. iPods came from a science-fiction film

    When Apple’s marketing people were looking for a name for what would eventually be called the iPod, the prototype reminded employee Vinnie Chieco of a line from 2001: A Space Odyssey: “Open the pod bay door, Hal!” The line referred to the white EVA Pods of the Discovery One spaceship in the film.

    Apple had previously registered the name “iPod” for internet kiosks, but unlike its popular MP3 player that particular plan never took off.

    4. If cats and dogs were into music, they wouldn’t use MP3

    MP3 is an audio file format. It compresses audio data by removing certain parts of sound that are outside the normal human hearing range and that cannot be heard by the listener.

    Dogs hear higher frequency sounds than humans — but not quite as high as cats can. So for a proper listening experience for cats and dogs the MP3 format wouldn’t work.

    5. It started as a telephone problem

    The research into audio coding that eventually led to the MP3 file format took place at the Erlangen-Nuremberg University in Germany in the early 1970s. Professor Dieter Seitzer and his students were studying the problem of transmitting speech in high quality over phone lines.

    But with the introduction of ISDN and fibre optic cables for telecommunication, improved speech coding became less important. As a new idea, Professor Seitzer’s team switched to research in coding of music signals.