DAPs and etc

[grayestofghosts]

In a fit of astonishingly wasteful spending I'm getting a dedicated digital audio player. I am not sure if I'm going to end up using it... it will either be the best purchase I've made in a while or a terrible waste, but I'm getting one of the cheap ones so it's unlikely to be too terrible if I end up not using it much. Most of the reviews I see of people using them are audiophiles and I'm not sure I can actually discern anything that they're talking about when I'm listening, because I'm usually listening when I'm doing things. However that's kind of the problem, because most audio comes from my phone and the phone is the most distracting and anxiety-inducing thing in my general vicinity, being able to listen to music that's not attached to my phone should be... good? At least I hope. I think if things were going well in the world I would care a lot less about staying off my phone so much but these days you just scroll and something brand new and horrible hits you in the face every few hours. I need to be able to do my job, at least.

Comments

[grayestofghosts]

Honestly I think the cheap DAP + cheap KOSS earbuds still has better sound quality than my iPhone and bluetooth earbuds (which are also admittedly very cheap). I can't hear the finer points that are apparently significant but a part of that is probably also that I put on music when I'm doing other things so perfect sound quality would not be an issue even if I could tell the difference.

I wish I still had my iPod. Using the buttons on my new device and the touch screen on my phone is just making me marvel at what a thing of beauty the clickwheel was. Why did we get rid of it?

[tozka]

Well from a capitalist POV I suppose it's easier to sell an "everything all in one device" thing to more people than a "music in your pocket" device that most people probably didn't care about. :P I'm just surprised my iPod still works as well as it does; I bought the thing in 2007 or 2008 and it still works! If I tried to use a smart phone nearly 20 years old I don't know how well that'd go.

[grayestofghosts]

You say that but it seemed like everyone had an iPod at the time! If it wasn't an iPod it was a zune, or some Sony thing, and before thay there were walkmans... it seems kind of like the opposite, tbh. I remember people putting music on their early smart phones because of course it was easier to put everything into one device, but it was hard because back then they hardly had any storage.

Circa 2010 my LG phone with the full keyboard, which I had just before I got my first iPhone, I was very excited about because it had a basic browser, but also had AOL, MSN, and Yahoo instant messengers integrated. At the time I used all three. None of these services exist anymore.

[tozka]

lol I wonder if it depended on location! 2005-2008-ish I was in high school going into college in Albuquerque at the time and while plenty of people had the Shuffle, they only seemed to ever use it when they went out jogging. None of my contemporaries had a proper iPod, and before that I was the only person with a CD player, too. But as soon as the iPod Touch dropped in 2007 it seemed like everyone had one! And then of course iPhones a bit later, especially around 2010 it seemed like everyone made the switch. I was a holdout and didn't get a smartphone until 2012; even my parents had iPhones before me, haha!