Dismantled Philips EXP2582 portable CD player

A portable CD player is a

portable audio player A portable audio player is a personal mobile device that allows the user to listen to recorded audio while mobile. Sometimes a distinction is made between a ''portable'' player, battery-powered and with one or more small loudspeakers, and a ''pers ...

used to play

compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then rele ...

s. The first audio player released was the Discman D-50 by

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

.Lungu, R
"History of the Portable Audio Player."
2008-11-27.

Features

The basic features of a portable CD player are: #Play/Pause button #Stop button #Rewind button #Fast forward button #Hold button (some models) #

Liquid crystal display A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat panel display, flat-panel display or other Electro-optic modulator, electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers. Liqui ...

#Headphone/Audio out socket The play/pause button allows the user to pause in the middle of a track (song) and resume play where the listener left off by pressing the button again. The stop button stops play. The fast forward and rewind buttons can be held down to move rapidly forward (fast forward) or backward (rewind) in a track; play will resume once the button is released. The liquid crystal display provides a visual indicator of remaining battery life, the number of the track currently playing, and the amount of time elapsed on the track. Some portable CD players can play

CD-R CD-R (Compact disc-recordable) is a digital optical disc storage format. A CD-R disc is a compact disc that can be written once and read arbitrarily many times. CD-R discs (CD-Rs) are readable by most CD readers manufactured prior to the in ...

CD-RW CD-RW (Compact Disc-Rewritable) is a digital media, digital optical disc data storage device, storage format introduced in 1997. A CD-RW compact disc (CD-RWs) can be written, read, erased, and re-written. CD-RWs, as opposed to CDs, require ...

discs and some can play other formats such as

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 ...

-encoded audio. While audio typically is output via a headphone connector, higher-end models may feature an additional integrated speaker. The 8 cm CD provides a smaller alternative to the normal 12 cm CD (although with a lower capacity). Miniature players exist that play only this format. Some portable CD players feature an externally-attached playback controller as depicted, to facilitate control while the main unit is placed in a bag or pocket.

Issues with recordable CDs

Some early portable CD players do not play recordable CDs (

) properly because of the way these CDs are recorded, and due to the significantly lower reflectivity of CD-RW. A consumer-recorded CD is recorded by making marks in a thin layer of organic dye, which leads to incompatibility with some CD players. For some users of CD-Rs, the solution to this is to burn the CD at a slower speed or use a different brand of recordable CDs. Burning at too slow a speed can also cause issues. Ideally, CD-Rs should be burned at half their rated maximum speed, for example, a CD-R with a maximum rating of 48x should be burned at 24x.

Future

Portable CD players are declining in popularity since the rise in popularity of

Portable media 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 ...

s that play

digital audio Digital audio is a representation of sound recorded in, or converted into, digital form. In digital audio, the sound wave of the audio signal is typically encoded as numerical samples in a continuous sequence. For example, in CD audio, sa ...

files including the

iPod The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes ...

and

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

s. Before digital audio players became popular, many switched over to

MiniDisc MiniDisc (MD) is an erasable magneto-optical disc-based data storage format offering a capacity of 60, 74, and later, 80 minutes of digitized audio. Sony announced the MiniDisc in September 1992 and released it in November of that year fo ...

as an alternative to CDs, due to the compact size of the MiniDisc format.Wallop, H
Portable CD players make a comeback
12-07-08.

References

{{Compact disc navbox Consumer electronics Japanese inventions Portable audio players Portable media players Compact disc

Features

Issues with recordable CDs

Future

See also

References