 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(December 2023) |
Shuffle play is a mode of music playback in which songs are played in a randomized order that is decided upon for all tracks at once. [1] It is commonly found on CD players, digital audio players and media player software. Shuffle playback prevents repeated tracks, which makes it distinct from random playback, in which the next track is chosen at random after the last track has ended.
In a CD player one can only shuffle songs on that CD, or with some models that could hold more than one CD, shuffle the songs on all of those CDs. Some CDs have been designed for the shuffle feature on CD players, such as They Might Be Giants' Apollo 18 . More modern CD players come with the shuffle feature.
Almost all software on computers has the shuffle feature including Windows Media Player and MediaMonkey. Most electronic devices including mobile phones and iPods have the shuffle feature and devices have even been created just for the shuffle feature, such as the Apple iPod Shuffle. Media devices and players can usually shuffle more than just albums: they can also shuffle all of an artist's music, all of the music in a certain genre, and even all songs on the device. Users can also create playlists of whatever songs they like and shuffle them.
The compact disc (CD) is a 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 released in October 1982 in Japan and branded as Digital Audio Compact Disc.
Compact Disc Digital Audio, also known as Digital Audio Compact Disc or simply as Audio CD, is the standard format for audio compact discs. The standard is defined in the Red Book, one of a series of Rainbow Books that contain the technical specifications for all CD formats.
Video CD is a home video format and the first format for distributing films on standard 120 mm (4.7 in) optical discs. The format was widely adopted in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Greater China, Central Asia and West Asia, superseding the VHS and Betamax systems in the regions until DVD-Video finally became affordable in the first decade of the 21st century.
Windows Media Player, is the first media player and media library application that Microsoft developed to play audio and video on personal computers. It has been a component of the Microsoft Windows operating system, including Windows 9x, Windows NT, Pocket PC, and Windows Mobile. Microsoft also released editions of Windows Media Player for classic Mac OS, Mac OS X, and Solaris, but has since discontinued them.
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.
The iPod was a series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on November 10, 2001, about 8+1⁄2 months after the Macintosh version of iTunes was released. Apple sold an estimated 450 million iPod products as of 2022. Apple discontinued the iPod product line on May 10, 2022. At over 20 years, the iPod brand is the oldest to be discontinued by Apple.
Media player software is a type of application software for playing multimedia computer files like audio and video files. Media players commonly display standard media control icons known from physical devices such as tape recorders and CD players, such as play, pause, fastforward (⏩️), rewind (⏪), and stop buttons. In addition, they generally have progress bars, which are sliders to locate the current position in the duration of the media file.
iTunes is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital multimedia, on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating systems, and can be used to rip songs from CDs, as well as play content with the use of dynamic, smart playlists. Options for sound optimizations exist, as well as ways to wirelessly share the iTunes library.
A playlist is a list of video or audio files that can be played back on a media player, either sequentially or in a shuffled order. In its most general form, an audio playlist is simply a list of songs that can be played once or in a loop. The term has several specialized meanings in the realms of television broadcasting, radio broadcasting and personal computers.
Rhythmbox is a free and open-source audio player software, tag editor and music organizer for digital audio files on Linux and Unix-like systems.
The iPod Shuffle is a discontinued digital audio player designed and formerly marketed by Apple Inc. It was the smallest model in Apple's iPod family, and was the first iPod to use flash memory. The first model was announced at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 11, 2005; the fourth- and final-generation models were introduced on September 1, 2010. The iPod Shuffle was discontinued by Apple on July 27, 2017.
A portable media player (PMP) or 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 on a compact disc (CD), Digital Versatile Disc (DVD), Blu-ray Disc (BD), flash memory, microdrive, SD cards or hard drive; most earlier PMPs used physical media, but modern players mostly use flash memory. In contrast, analogue portable audio players play music from non-digital media that use analogue media, such as cassette tapes or vinyl records.
MediaMax CD-3 is a software package created by SunnComm which was sold as a form of copy protection for compact discs. It was used by the record label RCA Records/BMG, and targets both Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Elected officials and computer security experts regard the software as a form of malware since its purpose is to intercept and inhibit normal computer operation without the user's authorization. MediaMax received media attention in late 2005 in fallout from the Sony XCP copy protection scandal.
Gapless playback is the uninterrupted playback of consecutive audio tracks, such that relative time distances in the original audio source are preserved over track boundaries on playback. For this to be useful, other artifacts at track boundaries should not be severed either. Gapless playback is common with compact discs, gramophone records, or tapes, but is not always available with other formats that employ compressed digital audio. The absence of gapless playback is a source of annoyance to listeners of music where tracks are meant to segue into each other, such as some classical music, progressive rock, concept albums, electronic music, and live recordings with audience noise between tracks.
Mini CDs, or pocket CDs, are CDs with a smaller diameter and one-third the storage capacity of a standard 120 mm disc.
CD/DVD copy protection is a blanket term for various methods of copy protection for CDs and DVDs. Such methods include DRM, CD-checks, Dummy Files, illegal tables of contents, over-sizing or over-burning the CD, physical errors and bad sectors. Many protection schemes rely on breaking compliance with CD and DVD standards, leading to playback problems on some devices.
Dance Factory is a PlayStation 2 game developed by Broadsword Interactive and published by Codemasters. It has been compared with Dance Dance Revolution, but unlike the Dance Dance Revolution series Dance Factory can generate dance moves from any music CD. It can be played with any PlayStation controller and allows input from the EyeToy camera, but the majority of gameplay is done with a foot-operated Dance pad and is available with or without a pad in the package.
The Xbox Music Mixer is a multimedia utility developed by WildTangent and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox in 2003. The software allows the user to transfer certain types of music and pictures directly from a PC to the Xbox, create custom soundtracks, and features a karaoke mode to sing pre-loaded or custom songs using a packaged karaoke microphone. Xbox Music Mixer was announced at E3 in 2003 as part of a 'Digital Entertainment Lifestyle' initiative, with expectations that the software would lead the console towards functionality as an all-in-one media centre. Upon release, the software received negative reception, with reviewers observing compatibility and usability issues and limitations to the game's karaoke features. The software was subsequently influential to the features of the similar Windows Media Center Extender for the Xbox 360.
A CD-ROM is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both computer data and audio with the latter capable of being played on a CD player, while data is only usable on a computer.
MusicBee is a freeware media player for playback and organization of audio files on Microsoft Windows, built using the BASS audio library.
 | This sound technology article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |