Reply To: FSM # 13: Do you take the music with you?
Should’t the question almost be reversed by now. Who does not use a personal stereo? And honestly, who still has a full home setup? I mean, yes, we probably do, most of use here where music is a big enough part of our lives, so that we even discuss it in forums and have hundreds or thousands of CDs, we all have home stereo/hifi/whatever setups, but I suppose many people only have a personal stereo at all. I once had a Walkman, which I used primarily for audiobooks, and a Sony Discman as my second ever CD player I ever owned. I used it mostly for home listening, but it gave me the option to take a few CDs with me.
So let’ see:
1. For the last decade or more, my phone phone is my “personal stereo”. I use it when I am on the move: trains, planes, the gym. Or when we’re on vacation. I used to do a lot of business travel, by plane or train, so a personal stereo comes in handy (oh, the pun), to listen to some music and to block out all the chatter and noise. I used to have lots of music on my phone, nowadays, Qobuz means I don’t even have to have any music on my phone, and ROON ARC even allows me to play my entire personal music collection from anywhere in the world without it having to be on my phone. So that’s pretty cool. So my phone is my stereo, and I have two pairs of noise cancelling headphones on the go (a bigger one for traveling and in-ears for the gym).
2. Not the street when I’m walking or the like, but for longer distance travels on planes or trains.
3. Mostly actually podcasts, but also albums or new releases. I often sample new releases on Qobuz “on the go”, like Daniel Lopatin’s “Marty Supreme” just a couple of days ago. I don’t shuffle music much (sometimes, in my car, when I have a bunch of stuff on there I haven’t heard, I put it on shuffle and try to guess what albums the tracks might belong to).
4. Why wouldn’t I? I don’t have all that much time to listen to music anyway, so a personal stereo expands that time by a considerable margin. I do prefer to listen at home on bigger speakers, but a personal stereo adds to the options. I have my phone with me all the time anyway, so that means now I also have all the music with me all the time.