The personal stereo is the term given to a portable audio player using an audiocassette player. This allows the listening of music through headphones while a person is mobile. The first personal stereo was the stereobelt invented and patented by Andreas Pavel in 1977. Pavel attempted to commercialise this invention but failed to do so. The first commercial personal stereo was the Sony Walkman released in 1979, created by Akio Morita, Masaru Ibuka (the co-founders of Sony) and Kozo Ohsone. A digital audio player (DAP) is a device that stores, organizes and plays digital music files. ... Typical audio 60-minute Compact Cassette. ... A typical consumer hi-fi cassette deck from late 1980s, features full electronic transport, separate playback and record heads, Dolby B, C and HXPro noise reduction A cassette deck is a type of tape deck for playing or recording compact audio cassettes. ... Closed Headphones Earbuds or Earphones Headphones (also known as earphones, stereophones, headsets, or the slang term cans) are a pair of transducers that receive an electrical signal from a media player or receiver and use speakers placed in close proximity to the ears (hence the name earphone) to convert the... An ancestor of modern-day personal audio devices such as the iPod, the Stereobelt was a portable stereo audiocassette player invented in the year 1972 by the German Andreas Pavel. ... In music, an invention is a short composition with two or three part counterpoint. ... A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to a person for a fixed period of time in exchange for the regulated, public disclosure of certain details of a device, method, process or composition of matter (substance) (known as an invention) which is new, inventive, and... Andreas Pavel (born in 1945) is a German inventor who is the father of the portable personal stereo cassette player, better known as the Walkman [1]. Pavel invented his device, the stereobelt, in 1972, and over the next few years, tried to interest companies like Grundig, Philips, and Yamaha in... For the album by Ash, see 1977 (album). ... Sony Corporation (Japanese katakana: ソニー) (TYO: 6758 , NYSE: SNE) is a global Japanese consumer electronics, financial services and entertainment corporation based in Tokyo, Japan. ... Sony Walkman Official Logo The Walkman is a popular Sony brand used by the company to market its portable audio players, and is synonymously used to refer to the original Walkman portable personal stereo player. ... This page refers to the year 1979. ... Akio Morita (盛田昭夫 Morita Akio, January 26, 1921 in Nagoya, Japan - October 3, 1999 in Tokyo) was a co-founder of Sony Corporation. ... Masaru Ibuka (April 11, 1908 in Nikko City, Japan - December 19, 1997 in Tokyo) was a Japanese electronics industrialist. ... Kozo Ohsone is the Japanese manager for Sony who was credited as one of the main developers of the popular Walkman. ...

The Walkman was a popular product and brand for Sony, making a lot of money for the company. The personal stereo concept was quickly cloned by other manufacturers and became the most widely used method of listening to music while travelling or exercising. This lasted, in more technological advanced countries, until the advent of other types of portable audio players such as the Minidisc and MP3 players. In some countries where more modern technology is not available or affordable, the audiocassette and personal stereo are still seen in everyday life. The Sony MZ1 MiniDisc player, the first to hit the market in 1992. ... MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a popular digital audio encoding and lossy compression format invented and standardized in 1991 by a team of engineers directed by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany. ...

Whilst the Walkman itself was a brand originally used for the Sony personal stereo players, it is now used by Sony itself for different forms of portable audio devices.

See also

• Walkman
• Stereobelt
• Andreas Pavel
• Portable audio player