FSM # 13: Do you take the music with you?
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I´m reading Michael Bull´s “Sounding Out the City – Personal Stereos and the Management of Everyday Life” and that made me a little curious about film score fans´ personal stereo use and their habits related to their walkman, discman, ipod, whatever.
So….
1. Do you use a personal stereo regularly? Every day or only on long-distance travels?
2. Do you use it in public spaces like the subway or the street?
3. What do you listen to and how do you play it (shuffle, album-by-album, song-by-song)?
4. WHY do you use a personal stereo? What does it ADD to your everyday life?
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.
Yes, it’s probably a very “2007 question”. But interestingly, my personal stereo use has gone the other way. Prior to the tinnitus situation, I did at the very least bring my old trusted iPod along for long travels. But now I don’t even do that. And I’ve never used my phone for music listening.
I’m guessing the Quboz thing means that you have to be connected to WiFi, though? You don’t have any music on your phone for situations where there’s no coverage?
I had a walkman in the 80s but I never had an iPod or else. I also don’t use my phone for music listening, don’t even have earbuds for it… Somehow don’t like listening to anything when walking or similar.
I’m guessing the Quboz thing means that you have to be connected to WiFi, though? You don’t have any music on your phone for situations where there’s no coverage?
Qobuz’ streaming service of course requires net access just like Spotify & Co do. Maybe they allow some local storage for that. I think Nick(?) will be able to answer that. I only use their download shop which is often a lot more expensive.
I had a time when I was on a plane or train and in hotels several times every month, so when you’re all on your own in whatever city you are at the moment and just get a few hours for yourself in a hotel room, you are happy if you got some great music (or podcasts or books) with you, and don’t have to rely on staring at the ceiling or turning on the TV. So to have it ALL bundled up in one small device is a dream come true for me.
That topic reminds me of the painful event in Argentina where I lost three original soundtrack CDs that I took with me to listen to them on my disc man:
John Williams’ Jane Eyre
Vertigo rerecording by Joel McNeely
The Return of the Jedi disc fromvthe 4-disc Arista box.Luckily I was able to rebuy all of them later on. The Jane Eyre at first just as the bootleg.
That sucks. Somewhere in Argentina, there is someone who owns three nice CDs, albeit without the covers, presumably.
Back in my Discman days, I had a black “fake leather” CD case which could hold 10 CDs that I often brought along, and thankfully nothing happened to them while they were out and about. In the even older Walkman days, I think I just jumbled the cassettes together in a bag. It’s a miracle they survived.
Qobuz’ streaming service of course requires net access just like Spotify & Co do. Maybe they allow some local storage for that. I think Nick(?) will be able to answer that. I only use their download shop which is often a lot more expensive.
I did answer the question, but I guess since I linked the actual sites, the board thought it is spam.
Interestingly that I find Qobuz pricing often very good, but maybe that’s because of the subscription I have. About a year ago I picked up the new Andris Nelsons Shostakovich cycle with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (19 CDs worth, all symphonies & concertos) for €10,99 in high-resolution sound, including booklet. That’s a lot cheaper than I’ve seen it anyhwere else.
I did answer the question, but I guess since I linked the actual sites, the board thought it is spam.
Probably too many links too short one after another which is often typical for spammers. We cannot do much against that as basically an external service handles this… Interesstingly I saw the answer post but probably because I am administrator…
Oops, been ages since that approval thing happened. Message restored.
Thanks…. and I just saw a mistake in the post, edited it (just one blank space), and it’s gone again. I don’t do this on purpose. :D.
It may be my posting style that triggers spam filters, in this case the links I inserted, but which were not intended as spam, but simply as a “service” to all of these services.
Funny side note: some other texts I wrote (not here) were last year flagged by some detectors as A.I. written, even though I had written them in the last century, over 25 years ago (and that’s for how long they were already available), long before there was such a thing as A.I. written texts. Why? I suppose it was because I used to use “em-dashes” regularly… even in rec.music.movies postings… and so the “flag” was triggered by “em-dashes” as a sign for A.I.Ah, yes, the ’em dashes’. I use them all the time myself. Too much, in fact, but it’s a journalist’s curse. Wasn’t aware it was an A.I. trigger, though.
That’s cause ChatGPT — an A.I. tool — likes to use them more frequently than most people do. 🙂
Indeed, I used them all the time, either directly as em-dash (—) or I just use a double hyphen — when there’s only ASCII code available. Sometimes I write longer forum posts in a word processor, lest the forum resets or I want to change something before posting, so in those postings there may be typographical signs.
I suppose I should answer my own query, now almost 20 years later, with a different health situation and all that:
1. Do you use a personal stereo regularly? Every day or only on long-distance travels?
No. I used my iPod on long-distance travels up until early this year. Don’t know if I will do so again, I hope so. I also use it as a main listening device while I’m AT the actual holiday destination.
2. Do you use it in public spaces like the subway or the street?
No. I like to have all my senses about me when I’m out.
3. What do you listen to and how do you play it (shuffle, album-by-album, song-by-song)?
Back when I listened, it was mostly pop, rock, electronic. Things with a pronounced bass and sound. The extreme dynamics of orchestral music (be it film music or classical music) work poorly. I always played album-by-album, through and through.
4. WHY do you use a personal stereo? What does it ADD to your everyday life?
Well, it passed the time while sitting on a bus or ferry or plane or whatever.
I hardly ever use a personal stereo (earphones/earplugs) when listening. Like Thor, when I’m in public places I want to get both the visual and aural input of my surroundings in full. Maybe I’m suffering from some kind of aural FOMO 😉 . And the sound quality usually isn’t that great either. At least not with earplugs, but of course bona-fide earphones are much better. But they’re more to carry around.
So basically all my listening is done either at the stereo at home, or in my car. I got a new car about a year ago, and it’s got a spectacular sound system. And in the car, you don’t need to mind the volume, as there are no neighbors to worry about.
Also, when I work from home doing some not too concentration-heavy tasks, I sometimes listen to some (also not too concentration-demanding) music on a good-sounding Bluetooth stereo radio (with no bosses or coworkers around to tell me to stop 🙂 ).
Like Thor, when I’m in public places I want to get both the visual and aural input of my surroundings in full.
I need that as well. Quite important with all the traffic and such. While I do have a car that is the only place I listen to classic radio actually. It’s not new, I inherited it, so it is not new and the sound system is okay. I also mostly listen at home. Somehow I always had a preference to listen via headphones because I feel more like diving into the music then.
I only listen to music at home, and when I’m sitting down. I’ve never tried listening to music when out walking, or on a train. So many other sounds and sights to keep me amused. I like austerity. I wish I had shared some cheese with Ingmar Bergman in his bare kitchen.
That’s some image! By the way, Graham, your attention is wanted in Dr. Jacoby’s 70s religious jazz score thread on page 2.
But have you kept your walkman, Nils?
I have, yes. My Discman, too (which I think I used once or twice 😮).
How many of you own a car? I suppose you no longer need to “take the music with you” in cars, as most electric cars have built-in streaming services on the dashboard, but I suppose it sorta qualifies.
I’ve never owned a car in my life (even though I got a licence when I was about 19-20), so can’t really comment.
I have a car because I inherited it and before that always could borrow it when I needed. It does not have streaming built but still a CD player with Mp3 support and it already has blutooth and USB so you could connect your mobile. But I never did that actually. Driving is the only occasion I actually still listen to the radio.
How many of you own a car? I suppose you no longer need to “take the music with you” in cars, as most electric cars have built-in streaming services
I have a USB stick in my car (so yeah, I have a car) with roughly 400 albums in AAC format. I can easily select and switch albums/tracks. So I always have 400 albums “built in”, and of course I could also stream from my phone.
As I’m currently away from home, but need to listen to music, I’ve taken with me a couple of 90s Infinity PC speakers (these ones). Quite cumbersome, and they take up some room in the suitcase, but better than most other new portable speakers. I can’t listen to headphones much, due to the tinnitus.
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