The MPMan music player, manufactured by the

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

n company SaeHan Information Systems, debuted in Asia in March 1998, and was the first mass-produced portable solid state

digital audio player A portable media player (PMP) (also including the related digital audio player (DAP)) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored o ...

. The internal

flash memory Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both us ...

could be expanded, but there was no support for external memory. It was delivered with a docking station. To put music into the device, the music first had to be encoded in the

mp3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

format by an encoder provided by the user, and then transferred via the

parallel port In computing, a parallel port is a type of interface found on early computers (personal and otherwise) for connecting peripherals. The name refers to the way the data is sent; parallel ports send multiple bits of data at once ( parallel ...

to the docking station that connected to the portable player device.impress.co.jp - The impact created a problem!? mp3 player portable "mpman" launched
/ref> On in Japan the

Akihabara is a common name for the area around Akihabara Station in the Chiyoda ward of Tokyo, Japan. Administratively, the area called Akihabara mainly belongs to the and Kanda-Sakumachō districts in Chiyoda. There exists an administrative district ca ...

"Akibaoo~" stores in Chūō,

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

started selling and models, the prices of which were (circa - today $) and , respectively. In North America, the South Korean device was first imported for sale by Michael Robertson's in mid-1998. Around the same time,

Eiger Labs The Eiger () is a mountain of the Bernese Alps, overlooking Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen in the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland, just north of the main watershed and border with Valais. It is the easternmost peak of a ridge crest that extends a ...

, Inc. imported and rebranded the player in two models, the Eiger MPMan F10, and Eiger MPMan F20. The Eiger MPMan F10 was a very basic unit and wasn't user expandable, though owners could upgrade the memory from to by sending the player back to with a cheque for . Measuring at tall by wide by thick and weighing a little over , it was very compact. The US price in 1998 for the F10 model with flash memory was circa . The was a similar model that used

SmartMedia SmartMedia is an obsolete flash memory, flash memory card standard owned by Toshiba, with capacities ranging from 2 MB to 128 MB. The format mostly saw application in the early 2000s in digital cameras and audio production. SmartMedia m ...

cards for expansion, and ran on a single AA battery, instead of rechargeable

NiMH NIMH may refer to: *Nickel–metal hydride battery (NiMH), a type of electrical battery *National Institute of Mental Health, an agency of the United States government *National Institute of Medical Herbalists, a professional organisation in the Un ...

batteries.

Technical data MPMan MP F-10

*Player device: ** Memory: 16/32/64/128 (MP-F60 T12) MB ** Dimensions: 16.5 mm thick, 70 mm wide, 90 mm tall ** Weight: 65 grams (without battery) ** Signal/Noise ratio: 70 dB ** Distortion rate: 0.1% ** Maximum output: 5 mW ** Output Connector: 3.5 mm stereo

TRS connector A phone connector, also known as phone jack, audio jack, headphone jack or jack plug, is a family of electrical connectors typically used for analog audio signals. A plug, the male connector, is inserted into the jack, the female connect ...

for

headphone Headphones are a pair of small loudspeaker drivers worn on or around the head over a user's ears. They are electroacoustic transducers, which convert an electrical signal to a corresponding sound. Headphones let a single user listen to an au ...

s ** Frequency response: 20 – 20,000 Hz ** Power Supply: Rechargeable Battery (gum type DC 1.2V 1000mAh x 2) ** Power Supply (MP-F60 T12): (Rechargeable) AA Battery DC 1.5V x 1 ** Available colors: Gold, Pink, Silver, Skeleton black, Blue *Docking station: ** Dimensions: 30 mm thick, 133 mm x 110 mm ** Weight: 80 grams ** Power: DC 9V 400mA (AC adapter included)

Technical data MPMan MP-F60 T12

*Player device: ** Memory: 16/32/64/128 MB ** Dimensions: 16.5 mm thick, 70 mm wide, 90 mm tall ** Weight: 65 grams (without battery) ** Signal/Noise ratio: 70 dB ** Distortion rate: 0.1% ** Maximum output: 5 mW ** Output Connector: 4 pin 3.5 mm stereo

for

s and wired remote. ** Frequency response: 20 – 20,000 Hz ** Power Supply: one DC 1.5V (Rechargeable) AA Battery ** Available colors: Gold, Pink, Silver, Skeleton black, Blue Audio recording function and AM / FM radio. Memory expansion by Smart Media Cards.

Critical reception

The

RIAA The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/o ...

's Associate Director of Anti-Copyright infringement initially said the MPMan had "''no function other than playing material that was stolen from record companies''". Nevertheless, he later said it was "''a unique device. It's something that we haven't seen on the market before''".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mpman Audiovisual introductions in 1998 Digital audio players South Korean inventions