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A digital audio player (DAP), often known as an mp3 player, is a device that stores, organizes and plays digital music files. They are more often known as MP3 players (because of the MP3 format's ubiquity), but DAPs often play more file formats than mp3 players [wikipedia.org].
There are two main types of MP3 players. Flash-based MP3 Players are solid state devices that hold digital audio files on internal or external media, such as memory cards. Due to technological restrictions, these are comparatively low-storage devices, commercially ranging from 128MB to 8GB (8000MB), such as the 2nd generation iPod nano and the iriver clix, which can often be enhanced with additional memory. As they are solid state and do not have movable parts, they are very durable. In effect, they do not undergo limitations that owners of Hard Drive-based players face, such as fears of dropping their player. Such players are commonly integrated into USB pen-drives [mp3licensing.com].
Hard Drive-based MP3 Players or Digital Jukeboxes are devices that read digital audio files from a hard drive. These players have elevated capacities, varying from 1GB to 160GB, depending on the hard drive technology, price and brand. At usual encoding rates, this means that thousands of tracks ? possibly an entire music collection ? can be stored in a single MP3 player. Because of the storage capability, devices that also display video and pictures are often hard-drive based. The Apple iPod, Creative Zen and Microsoft Zune are examples of popular digital jukeboxes.
The predecessors to MP3 players were portable CD players and MiniDisc players (neither being usually considered a "digital audio player"). Non-mechanical M ...