I still have my first MP3 player, a Creative Nomad Muvo. Plugs straight into a USB port like a flash drive with no need for cables, runs on a single rechargeable AAA, and has an awkward as hell interface.
@vfrdirk Only recently did I learn how awesome they were. '90s me would’ve been all about MiniDisc if I knew about it. But my podunk town stuck with cassette tapes until like ~1996 then switched to CDs for a few years until iPods started taking over ~2005.
I had one years ago, can not remember the name, but it looked like a medallion and the earbuds were built into the “necklace”. Had a little jack to recharge, this was before USB charging was really a thing. Do not remember the capacity but I had dozens of songs on it and would cycle new ones on when I was bored with others. I wore that thing everywhere for years.
After that, the high point was Google Play. I simply had hundreds of my faves loaded on my phone and kept a separate folder for new stuff I wanted to hear. Then Google of course ruined it with that fucking Youtube Music garbage. They eventually ruin everything. Hell, they ruined the entire internet. So much for don’t be evil.
@blaineg@pooflady I had a tiny portable tv I got at a time share presentation. When I didn’t sign up he tried to give me some shitty other reward but no I sat here for hours I WANT MY DAMN TINY TV. Used it maybe three times.
Portable music was kind of a PITA until I could have any music any time on something I carry around anyway.
Especially since Bluetooth has finally gotten good enough to be worthwhile.
My Sony Walkman MP3 player is awesome. It fits easily in my pocket (I also bought an armband for it.) and even included an AM/FM radio. I didn’t use it to watch videos, but it did include a pre-installed trailer for one of the Spider-man movies.
Shoutout to portable cd players, when the amount of skip protection time determined how cool you were. Oh yours has 8 seconds skip protection? This baby has 45 SECONDS!!!
As a kid I never left for the bus or walked to school without my Walkman but what I was really excited about was hooking up my portable cd player in my car bc I didn’t have to listen to cassettes.
I had a Zune as a rebellion (even as a full-grown, middle-aged, adult) against Apple. The battery is gone now. Better is the one I have had for a while that plays higher res files like wma files. I don’t use it much now and settle for my Pixel Phone to reduce items to carry. The resolution is less important now that my hearing has diminished (I’m not middle-aged anymore!). About 7 years ago I showed the Zune to a high-tech coder friend of my son and she was impressed that I had one.
I loved my Walkman way back when, but I had a gazillion songs on my last iPod, and it was the best thing ever. It made my purse heavier, especially when I carried both it and a cell phone, but it was worth it.
I’m sure I’ve already said it once in the forums, but I’ll say it again. Minidisc
The PEAK for me was in 1997. I was 20 years old, living in Japan and the Minidisc was all the rage.
I remember borrowing CDs from friends or coworkers and making copies to blank Minidiscs. I rarely copied the whole disc, I just copied the songs I wanted. And if I got bored of a disc, I would just copy over it.
If my friends didn’t have a song I wanted, I would go to a Tsutaya and rent the CD. I would go out to my car, use my Portable Kenwood CD player with Optical out and copy the songs using my Sony MZ-R2. Then I would return the CD and only pay a 1 day rental fee. Typically 100 yen ($1) or something small.
I read somewhere that Minidiscs cut into the sale of music so much back then, that blank minidiscs were marked up a bit and a portion of blank disc sales were given to music publishers, or something…
I even had a Kenwood 6 disc Minidisc changer in my car. I mounted it next to the CD changer in the trunk, next to my amps and subwoofers. I was absolutely obnoxious and the locals probably hated me.
I still have a working minidisc player at home with all of my discs laying around like I’m still 20…
Back then, I still used AOL and was setting up my website on Angel Fire. If you don’t know about Angel Fire, it was a free web site hosting service, a lot like GeoCities. When you uploaded files via FTP, everything went to the same upload folder as everyone else’s files. You would then copy your files to your home directory for your web site. BUT you could grab everyone else’s animated flames, skulls and MIDI files before they moved them to their directories. Everything was MIDI back then, but I stumbled upon a LARGE file I couldn’t play. A Weezer MP3. It took HOURS to download. Eventually I moved back to the USA and learned more about these MP3s. In 1999, I built a computer and got a nice sound card, a Sound Blaster LIVE! 5.1 with SPDIF in/out (Optical). I could copy my MP3s over to Minidisc OR copy minidisc over to WAV then encode to MP3. All Digital! But time consuming and none of the text data came over, it had to be re-entered manually. laaaame.
Now I just hum, whistle or drum on stuff when I need some music.
8-track tape.
@cengland0 I can’t even find a picture of the one that was ubiquitous in the early 80s – the rounded one with the handle/speaker that twisted.
@cengland0 What about 4-track?
The pinch roller is part of the player, not the cartridge, and you had to pull a lever to raise it into the hole in the cartridge.
I remember loading mp3s on my Garmin GPS so when I traveled I had my own tunes to listen to and not hunt around for a local radio station.
Sansa.
I loved the functionally that Rockbox added to my Sansa.
@Euniceandrich The range of players supported by RockBox was amazing.
@toycardriver
“Everything you need, nothing you don’t”
@toycardriver @Euniceandrich still rocking a Rockboxed Sansa Clip+. Nothing has ever come even remotely close.
@Euniceandrich @mschuette @toycardriver
I need to Rockbox mine. The last official Sansa update borked the random playback and I stopped using it.
The one man band.
@yakkoTDI Needs AUDIO.
@phendrick @yakkoTDI
@blaineg @phendrick @yakkoTDI
He’s not very portable!
@blaineg @yakkoTDI That opening is just SO Three Dog Night!
/image sound burger
@awk Needs more cheese!
@awk Never saw that before.
I still have my first MP3 player, a Creative Nomad Muvo. Plugs straight into a USB port like a flash drive with no need for cables, runs on a single rechargeable AAA, and has an awkward as hell interface.
BOOMBoxes Baby!!
Portable MiniDisc was the hottest ticket…
@vfrdirk Only recently did I learn how awesome they were. '90s me would’ve been all about MiniDisc if I knew about it. But my podunk town stuck with cassette tapes until like ~1996 then switched to CDs for a few years until iPods started taking over ~2005.
POPSOCKETS! ROAD ROCKETS! SONNY CROCKETT! AWESOME!
The Sony Walkman, of course.
I had one years ago, can not remember the name, but it looked like a medallion and the earbuds were built into the “necklace”. Had a little jack to recharge, this was before USB charging was really a thing. Do not remember the capacity but I had dozens of songs on it and would cycle new ones on when I was bored with others. I wore that thing everywhere for years.
After that, the high point was Google Play. I simply had hundreds of my faves loaded on my phone and kept a separate folder for new stuff I wanted to hear. Then Google of course ruined it with that fucking Youtube Music garbage. They eventually ruin everything. Hell, they ruined the entire internet. So much for don’t be evil.
@ponagathos Fucking Google!!!
Calliope
@tweezak Sure, but they always crashed to the ground.
@SSteve But they have unbeatable bass
C’mon, people. Transistor radios.
@pooflady I still use one for basketball games.
@pooflady Sony Watchman?
@sammydog01 We take ours to the basement when there’s tornado warnings.
@blaineg Transistors were way before Watchmans.
@blaineg @pooflady I had a tiny portable tv I got at a time share presentation. When I didn’t sign up he tried to give me some shitty other reward but no I sat here for hours I WANT MY DAMN TINY TV. Used it maybe three times.
My phone.
Portable music was kind of a PITA until I could have any music any time on something I carry around anyway.
Especially since Bluetooth has finally gotten good enough to be worthwhile.
My Sony Walkman MP3 player is awesome. It fits easily in my pocket (I also bought an armband for it.) and even included an AM/FM radio. I didn’t use it to watch videos, but it did include a pre-installed trailer for one of the Spider-man movies.
Review I found on Youtube:
LEGOS! EGGOS! STRATEGO! AWESOME!
Shoutout to portable cd players, when the amount of skip protection time determined how cool you were. Oh yours has 8 seconds skip protection? This baby has 45 SECONDS!!!
As a kid I never left for the bus or walked to school without my Walkman but what I was really excited about was hooking up my portable cd player in my car bc I didn’t have to listen to cassettes.
Zune!
Who needed a white iPod when you could get a brown Zune?
/image Zune Brown
@Euniceandrich How’s the Zune tattoo guy doing these days?
I had a Zune as a rebellion (even as a full-grown, middle-aged, adult) against Apple. The battery is gone now. Better is the one I have had for a while that plays higher res files like wma files. I don’t use it much now and settle for my Pixel Phone to reduce items to carry. The resolution is less important now that my hearing has diminished (I’m not middle-aged anymore!). About 7 years ago I showed the Zune to a high-tech coder friend of my son and she was impressed that I had one.
I had all three
Tiny nuggets loaded with LEGALLY ACQUIRED music files
were fantastic. There was something about them that even MP3-enabled CD player couldn’t match.
I loved the form factor of Zune HD, but it retired very quickly after I got my hands on my first smartphone.
It even had HD Radio receiver! Unreal.
I loved my Walkman way back when, but I had a gazillion songs on my last iPod, and it was the best thing ever. It made my purse heavier, especially when I carried both it and a cell phone, but it was worth it.
Rio Karma, 20GB hard drive, but I upgraded mine.
@blaineg Yes! I had this one…
Earworms. I still take mine everywhere.
None of the above. Peak portable audio has not yet been achieved.
I’m sure I’ve already said it once in the forums, but I’ll say it again. Minidisc
The PEAK for me was in 1997. I was 20 years old, living in Japan and the Minidisc was all the rage.
I remember borrowing CDs from friends or coworkers and making copies to blank Minidiscs. I rarely copied the whole disc, I just copied the songs I wanted. And if I got bored of a disc, I would just copy over it.
If my friends didn’t have a song I wanted, I would go to a Tsutaya and rent the CD. I would go out to my car, use my Portable Kenwood CD player with Optical out and copy the songs using my Sony MZ-R2. Then I would return the CD and only pay a 1 day rental fee. Typically 100 yen ($1) or something small.
I read somewhere that Minidiscs cut into the sale of music so much back then, that blank minidiscs were marked up a bit and a portion of blank disc sales were given to music publishers, or something…
I even had a Kenwood 6 disc Minidisc changer in my car. I mounted it next to the CD changer in the trunk, next to my amps and subwoofers. I was absolutely obnoxious and the locals probably hated me.
I still have a working minidisc player at home with all of my discs laying around like I’m still 20…
Back then, I still used AOL and was setting up my website on Angel Fire. If you don’t know about Angel Fire, it was a free web site hosting service, a lot like GeoCities. When you uploaded files via FTP, everything went to the same upload folder as everyone else’s files. You would then copy your files to your home directory for your web site. BUT you could grab everyone else’s animated flames, skulls and MIDI files before they moved them to their directories. Everything was MIDI back then, but I stumbled upon a LARGE file I couldn’t play. A Weezer MP3. It took HOURS to download. Eventually I moved back to the USA and learned more about these MP3s. In 1999, I built a computer and got a nice sound card, a Sound Blaster LIVE! 5.1 with SPDIF in/out (Optical). I could copy my MP3s over to Minidisc OR copy minidisc over to WAV then encode to MP3. All Digital! But time consuming and none of the text data came over, it had to be re-entered manually. laaaame.
Now I just hum, whistle or drum on stuff when I need some music.
The End
@xenophod Nice photos! I came to say “Sony MiniDisc” and stayed to read this cool post.
Ear horns.
Hitclips gonna make their comeback any day now.
@Catburd DankPods is doing his part:
bitches sleep on the Mini Disk too often
@DocJRoberts It did well elsewhere in the world, especially Japan, but the US almost completely missed out. I was still burning CDs up to like 2007.
sansa clip