Method and apparatus for incorporating additional audio information into audio data file identifying information

Abstract

A digital audio player (10) and a method for processing encoded digital audio data. The audio data player has a hard disk or other data storage medium (32) for storing data files, a microcontroller (22), buffer memory (25) for anti-skip protection, and an audio decoder (12). The encoded audio data files and associated decoder files are downloaded from a personal computer or similar device to the audio data player hard drive (32). The data structure generally includes a first audio data file having an information segment and an audio data segment. The information segment, generally called a tag, may include textual and graphic information related to the audio data segment. The present invention further includes an additional data frame in the information segment storing one or more audio data files, or “audio tag files”. The audio tag files stored in the information segment include encoded audible or voice recordings that vocalize other tag information related to the audio data segment. The informational audio tag files can be created by processing textual tag information with a text-to-voice converter, or by downloading the informational audio tag files from a server or the Internet. To prevent a data processing device, from inadvertently recognizing the informational audio tag files as stand-alone audio data files, the data structure of the audio tag files may be altered prior to storage in the audio data file.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.