Nagase (Japan). will shortly release the “TRANSGEAR HMP-100,” a portable audio player using a hard disc drive (HDD). This new product can download audio files and display their information without using PCs. Unlike other current “PCless” portable audio players released from rival companies, the HMP-100 product can display such data as the title and the artist’s name even if the audio file is transmitted from an MD (mini disc). The Transgear HMP-100 features a database containing particular data sets to identify each file, part of whose melody waveforms is encoded, and general data with an equivalent volume of 3.5 million tunes including the titles and artist names. Users can add information on audio files transmitted from MD players by matching them with information in this database.

This database, dubbed “MusicID,” is a development by Gracenote, Inc. of the US, a company known for its “CDDB” database, which offers tune titles and artist names on CDs in the market. The built-in database contains information on tunes released by the end of October 2005. According to the company, users can acquire data on new titles released after then by connecting the player with a mobile phone via an USB cable, and making access to Gracenote’s database of about 40 million tune titles on the Internet. Nagase calls this technology “MagicSync” and intends to license it in combination with Gracenote MusicID to audio product manufacturers. Via – Techon