what was the first portable 'digital music' player...

firstly im not sure if this should go in GD, but what the hell, i need help :)

The first portable MP3 player was the Eiger Labs MPMan F10, released in 1998... fair enough, Diamond MM came along with their Rio PMP300... but was there anything mp3-esque before the MPMan?

Googling for 'first digital audio player', doesnt come up with much, other than new products like the Creative Nomad II which is the "first digital audio player to feature an FM tuner".

So basically, was the MP3 player the first portable digital audio player, or was there something before it?


Thanks :)

portable digital audio? sony's cd walkman was waaay before.. and i think they did a dat player before that..

yeah, the d-50 was '84 :)

basically i've got to write a 3000-word 'conference paper' for my multimedia module... Its going to be on portable music players, and I've said

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Originally Posted by me

The Eiger Labs MPMan F10 was the world’s first portable mp3 player, released in 1998.

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This is technically correct as it was the first mp3 player, but were there any other devices that stored music digitally, on something like a memory card/chip which was 'non-mp3'...

for the sake of clarity (as i dont feel im being particularly clear), if someone had come along in 1996 and created the worlds first portable WMA player, i'd want to use that as my example of 'then', and the new iPod as an example of 'now'...

does that make any sense? :)

I remember when a Rio player was released by a now defunct company (it was bought up by someone, possible Creative) yonks ago. When the PC magazines reviewed it they said that this was the first MP3 player on the scene although they could quite possibly have been meaning the first one released in the UK.

MP3 players came long before WMA ones. I can't recall there being any pre MP3 digital media players.

wma came a while after mp3, as did atrac players (well, sony had them in '99).

i'm sure you got your info from wiki (cos it confirms what you said) so you're probably right. a mate of mine had (and still has) the first ever mp3 player in the uk - a diamond rio. he had it when we were at college, cost him £400 to import (32 meg)

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Originally Posted by 5lab

wma came a while after mp3, as did atrac players (well, sony had them in '99).

i'm sure you got your info from wiki (cos it confirms what you said) so you're probably right. a mate of mine had (and still has) the first ever mp3 player in the uk - a diamond rio. he had it when we were at college, cost him £400 to import (32 meg)

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wma came after mp3 for sure, but just wanted to make sure there wasnt some obscure format which was used, ie music was stored on a piece of memory, with the same concept as an mp3 player but just not with mp3s :)

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Originally Posted by Bluecube

MP3 players came long before WMA ones. I can't recall there being any pre MP3 digital media players.

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No, neither can i :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 5lab

wma came a while after mp3, as did atrac players (well, sony had them in '99).

i'm sure you got your info from wiki (cos it confirms what you said) so you're probably right. a mate of mine had (and still has) the first ever mp3 player in the uk - a diamond rio. he had it when we were at college, cost him £400 to import (32 meg)

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Thank you! That was bugging me. It was a Diamond Rio...

I bought a rio 800 off these boards (or old-school OCS boards, i forget) a fair few years back, thought it was the mutts - still have it knocking around somewhere, it was absolutely fantastic!

http://www.pcmag-mideast.com/reviews...ZAkVZZOZimTUfo

They claim it, anyway :)

^^ is that saying '97 was the first mp3 player? or simply that Eiger Labs made the first one?