HOW DOES AN MP3 PLAYER WORK?
When you play a digital file, you essentially reverse the analog-to-digital process. A digital audio device, such as an MP3 player or a computer sound card, uses a DAC (digital-to-analog converter) to turn the 1s and 0s back into an analog signal that can then be amplified and broadcast over headphones or speakers. The sound depends on the attributes and quality of the digital file, the DAC chip in the player, the amount of distortion and hiss added by interference from the device’s other circuitry, and the audio output level of your headphones or speakers. When a digital device plays music that has been compressed by a codec, software on its chip (called firmware) applies the codec to decode the file, then sends the decompressed 1s and 0s to the DAC. more info on this site. http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-7964_7-5134106-2.
At their most basic level, digital music such as MP3s looks a lot like any other computer data file: a long series of 1s and 0s. In order to turn an analogue signal (such as one picked up by a standard microphone) into a digital stream, ADC (analogue-to-digital converter) software measures the signal at a regular interval to find the sampling rate. These samples, if measured close enough together, form almost an exact representation of the analogue signal so as to approximate the transmission using 1s and 0s that computers and MP3 players can read.
Find out what makes it possible for us to listen to a bunch of 1s and 0s. Digitizing music At their most basic level, digital music such as MP3s looks a lot like any other computer data file: a long series of 1s and 0s. In order to turn an analog signal (such as one picked up by a standard microphone) into a digital stream, ADC (analog-to-digital converter) software measures the signal at a regular interval to find the sampling rate. These samples, if measured close enough together, form a near-exact representation of the analog signal so as to approximate the transmission using 1s and 0s that computers and MP3 players can read. Compression Each second of true CD-quality sound takes up more than 1.3MB of disk space, which is why file-compression technology is essential to digital audio, especially portable audio. Using principles of psychoacoustics (how the brain perceives sound) and perceptual coding (eliminating imperceptible sounds), engineers develop algorithms, called codecs (comp