3 ms·
It's amazing how for granted we take such a task as decoding MP3s when (in the grand scheme of things) it wasn't that long ago we were using computers to do wha
by welly 8y ago
It's amazing how for granted we take such a task as decoding MP3s when (in the grand scheme of things) it wasn't that long ago we were using computers to do what seemed to be far more advanced tasks, that were unable to do something as "simple" as decoding a music file.
I have vague recollections of my first introduction to MP3 and thought at the time "this is definitely the future" and as soon as one of the first hardware MP3 players came out (MPMan? MP3Man? Something like that) I was straight on it.
Of course, it could only hold a handful of songs, I think it might have had 32Mb storage and had to be fairly choosey with what songs I'd take with me but it was brilliant, certainly for the time.
I seem to recall my second MP3 player was a Creative Nomad but I'm sure it would only play WMA files, there was something about it that ended up being a massive pain involving converting MP3 files and so didn't have it for that long.
- koolba 8y agoIs it the Diamond Rio PMP 300 you’re thinking of? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_PMP300 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_PMP300 That thing was awesome and really blew people away with how small modern electronics could be. Re-encoding mp3 files at 16kpbs (so you could fit a decent amount on the 32MB) made the music sound like crap but we didn’t care.
- gergles 8y agoA lot of people think the Rio was the first commercial MP3 player, but GP seems to probably be thinking of the actual first commercial MP3 player, the MPMan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPMan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPMan