Even though I was an early adopter of MP3 player technology and geeked out at hacking my Nomad Jukebox to hold a 60 gig drive, these days I find myself living a sort of odd hybrid digital/analog life (and here, I’m counting CDs as analog, using “analog” as a synonym for “physical”).
These days, I don’t drive around with my large capacity MP3 player. Partially because it gave up the ghost and partially because my listening habits in the car have shifted towards podcasts rather than throwing all my music on shuffle play. So, while driving, my tiny 1 gig iAudio 5 is my weapon of choice, usually filled with four or five good-length podcasts.
At work, I have a 150 gig external Firewire drive that, over time, I’ve filled with music. Mostly ripped, some downloaded from MP3 blogs. So, though I bring CDs into work, I usually listen to them and then end up ripping them.
At home, though, I almost never listen to music in a non-physical format. It’s CDs or records. The exception is in the baby’s room, because she has her own Mac Mini with plenty of iTunes playlists. (Seriously.)
Speaking of records, as I’ve been moving my records into a new storage unit in the basement, I’ve been rediscovering a lot of old favorites. I realized that for almost every record I have a story, an odd little historical factoid, or I remember where and when I bought it. With a few thousand records, that makes me feel like some sort of savant. “Definitely… definitely bought this at the Trading Post for $1.00 in 1993… definitely had lots of Rap-A-Lot promos… time for Wapner…”
I do think that eventually I’ll have a pretty nice all-digital set-up at home. Once I can get a few terabytes of space and suitable wireless capability, I get to transferring selected music to that. But for now, I’ll continue to live a hybrid digital/analog life.
Posted in Technology, Television, Movies, and Music
COD February 1, 2007, 6:46 pm
I’ve got my MP3s on a NAT drive, although I probably still have 100 CDs to rip. The next step is to pick up a $50 computer somewhere and run the sound card output into an input on my receiver. Then I’ll be able to play my digital music through the good stereo.
Steve A February 1, 2007, 11:36 pm
I’ve got to say I’m definitely analog by your standards. Easy answer: I don’t own an MP3. I’ve got oodles of CDs, a few cassettes (although they haven’t seen the light of day since I left the military) and record albums.
CDs are my play of choice at home, work (when I have an opportunity) and in the car.
Ciao,
Terry M. February 2, 2007, 2:41 am
I own about 1200 CD’s which is a lot by pretty much everybody’s standards except compared to Ryan. In the past 4 years I probably have listened to maybe about 4 of them, at home, if even that many. I have become so addicted to pirating music I have 1.5 TB’s of music (and movies) on the computer and that’s the only way I listen to music at home. Even when I have the CD it’s almost always easier to just download the torrent or find it on a newsgroup than try to find the CD. At work it’s my MP3 player, in the car I have CD changer which has been full of the same 6 CD’s since I bought it. I stopped doing vinyl 8 or 9 years ago, and have located copies of everything I did have except maybe a handful of the Italian and German imports.