8 ms·

“When you use a Walkman all the memories come back”: In love with old tech

54 points by beardyw 3y ago

derwiki 3y ago
I think there is something to be said for an album’s native format, eg vinyl for Dark Side of the Moon, cassette for Metallica, CD for Britney Spears. To some extent the artist/production was optimized for the medium. Unrelatedly, I switched to collecting tapes because a) collecting is still fun and b) tapes are a lot cheaper than vinyl these days.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  When I record a vinyl album, I'll often leave in the needle drop and pickup noises.
  - OccamsMirror 3y ago
    How often do you record from vinyl to another medium?
    - lb1lf 3y ago
      Not the OP, but if your taste in music (at least partially) flies under the radar of the streaming sites, you'll find yourself doing it on a regular basis. Doubly so if whatever music tickles your fancy was released a few decades ago. I've lots of albums at home which simply aren't released in the digital domain. Both classical and bossa nova, for the most part, but also the occasional pop/rock album. Many of those I've recorded to FLAC so that I can listen to them when anywhere but in front of my turntable.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      I have a lot of vinyl that was never released on CD. Things like the soundtrack to the Kirk Douglas movie "The Vikings".
- 10729287 3y ago
  Also, it's sometimes difficult or even impossible to listen to the original mix of an album on streaming websites, if there's a remaster available.
  - AlecSchueler 3y ago
    This annoys me so much! Some artists like The Beatles who have so many different mixes I just have to resort to using YouTube instead of Spotify. I wanted to listen to Please Please Me last week but Spotify gave me some horrible stereo remix that didn't even sound like the same music. I knew there were already two or remasters issued in mono, one from the 80 and two from the 00s, so figured I'd just append "mono" to my search and they'd all come up. Nope, just the most recent stereo remaster optimized for playback on phone speakers. Went to YouTube and I had the choice of every mix that had been published as well as a rip of the original vinyl pressing and a compilation of the outtakes. They're all published by the same company too and have the same rights holders so I don't understand why they choose to hide so much of their work.
    - 10729287 3y ago
      ... Because Spotify is an app to consume music, not to listen to it. They don't want to disturb the casual user who just want to listen to "that tune from the beatles". FLAC and Ripping groups/individuals is where you have to go if you care about mixes or little differences from a medium to another. It's such a joy to dig into an artist and find perfectly crafted rips of early 80s Japanese CDs of Michael Jackson and compare it with the vinyl releases, for example. I feel your pain, and it's partly why I'm more and more moving from those platforms. It was very useful at first but useful is not how we want to deal with our music.
      - AlecSchueler 3y ago
        I guess I just thought of it as an alternative to buying the CDs and that the same variety wouls be available. Back in the day I could go into my local CD shop and choose between the 2009 mono or stereo reissue. Now I have the 2022 stereo mix and nothing else. The album was produced with mono in mind so it seems perverse that it's not available that way. I guess in a few years from now we'll only be able to get the AI enhanced versions that correct the guitar tuning to concert pitch or whatever. I know I could go to "ripping groups" and everything but Spotify came with the promise of getting the catalogues I wanted with minimal work on my part, in exchange for a monetary payment.
anjel 3y ago
Nostalgia is just another form of depression -Abbie Hoffman
- Moldoteck 3y ago
  It's interesting in the sense that there are people that like these old things(walkmans/film cameras) even if they were born in smartphone era. I don't think we can call this nostalgia since they haven't even experienced all these things in the first place
  - AshamedCaptain 3y ago
    Due to work I have to sometimes go fishing in development sites/garage sales/etc related to PC hardware from a couple decades ago (think DOS/win16 era). My experience is that I almost never see anyone who actually experienced those things: almost all these "retro" revivals are caused by young people being hyped by devices they _never_ experienced. So there's zero nostalgia. I don't know what thrill they get from it but I suppose it's "fake" nostalgia in the sense that they want to go back to a past that they have only heard about it (and thus idealized) in writing or in TV series. IMHO the people who actually experienced those devices for a long-time know to avoid them like the plague they are.
    - xanderlewis 3y ago
      I’ve felt for a long time that everyone is probably interested in the period of their birth, and particularly the years just before. There’s something uniquely weird feeling about that time — you were technically alive for some of it, and yet it’s totally alien to you. That’s why I think, for example, twenty year-olds today are interested in early 2000s fashion and computers.
    - Moldoteck 3y ago
      for me for example it's the tactile feedback. Smartphones are boring in tactile sense. On the other hand, taking a photo with a manual film camera is completely different: you must load/unload the film, be careful to not rotate the film too much when getting it back into container, manually adjusting focus, advancing the film and hearing all of this or even manually developing the film for bigger nerds. With walkmans it's probably the same but with cassetes - loading/unloading, connecting headset, all the mechanical sounds, different buttons, wheel volume controls, weird designs and colors. We just don't get this kind of tactile&sound feedback with modern laptops&smartphones and their colors are usually boring too, esp in recent years
SirHound 3y ago
I wonder if we have collectively worse memories than in the past partly for the fact our devices are constantly upgraded and replaced. Likewise fast fashion etc.
- skydhash 3y ago
  As someone who have barely been exposed to these technologies (it's already outdated by the time they got mainstream in the country, and the old is always competing with the new), I can agree with you. Right now, there is a firehose of options aimed at people and I believe we don't have the necessary framework to cope with these. I have some strong memories associated to particular tracks just because they were the only one I've been exposed to at those point of times. With streaming, everything kinda fade into the background, because everything new is instantly available (and there's something new every second). You can watch anything (so you watch nothing because you skip and switch when it's got a bit boring). It's gotten to a point that I'm restricting myself to a few options filtered some strict criteria for any media. I refrain myself from switching with a combination of friction and self discipline. My music listening is almost always from local media and album centered. I read fiction books only from my ereader and when I switch (slow because of the interface), that means that I don't intend to finish this particular book. This means that I have to either focus on the current item to consume it, or not consume it at all. And for those I do consume, it had lead me to a greater appreciation of the item, just because of the attention I've devoted to it.
  - noir_lord 3y ago
    I just made the decision to opt out of devices. All my computing devices are linux PC's (except one Android phone) - despite the UI churn linux in 2024 is much the same as linux in 2004 underneath and I have a reasonable chance of properly troubleshooting any issues. With Linux you are always the `user` and not the `consumer`, it's a different paradigm. Despite been a life long nerd, Gadgets have never been a thing I liked so it was easy to just not buy them.
    - M95D 3y ago
WalterBright 3y ago
I left the 80's cassette stereo in my 80's car, and only play 80's mixtapes in it.
- cottage-cheese 3y ago
  I need to get my car's cassette player fixed, but can't find someone to do it.
  - d0gsg0w00f 3y ago
    I don't think there's much of a market for repair anymore. If I were you I'd buy a few replacements on ebay and take them to a car stereo place. Ask them to keep swapping until one works
midasz 3y ago
I just miss listening to full albums. I know I can, there's nobody stopping me - but something changed in me I think. When I was a kid we didn't have a TV at home so evenings were sitting together and either having discussions or listening to music together (Opeth's Damnation and Deliverance were a staple). We had a room with a beamer that we explicitly used for movie nights. Now I've got a TV show on in the living room while checking stuff out on my phone and still feel like I should be doing more stuff.
- nvarsj 3y ago
  Getting off of Spotify has allowed me to switch back to album listening. Buy a record/cd player or for the more advanced rip CDs and use Plexamp (or purchase flac albums if available).
  - yourusername 3y ago
    I listen to full albums on spotify all the time. Why would i need to buy anything to do that?
    - 10729287 3y ago
      Some people prefer the minimalist approach and avoid all the disturbance from streaming websites, especially playlists or podcasts or just the ability to bounce from an album to another as they make links between artists or period or whatever. I also prefer listening to my mp3/flac collection on an offline player. It helps focusing.
    - nicholassmith 3y ago
      You don't have to, but it does often feel like when you use Spotify that isn't what the app would like you to do. The initial load in heavily steers you towards using a playlist instead and whilst it will occasionally list albums on the home screen it's often broken and will give you a single instead. I'm a huge Spotify user and listen to a lot of albums on it, but there's definitely merits for a more focussed experience like physical media or a digital player.
    - 3y ago
karlkloss 3y ago
I don't miss those times. Walkmen were expensive, good cassettes were expensive, batteries were expensive, cassettes wore out sooner or later, the player's rubber parts wore out and then it damaged the tape, skipping was a pain in the back, sound quality was limited, recording/copying took forever, etc. Nah. As soon as mp3 arrived, I converted everything and never looked back.
- anileated 3y ago
  Wearing out of the physical medium makes music more valuable, and your experience directly depends on perceived value.
  - halgir 3y ago
    Startup idea: DRM-locked audio files that can only be played once.
    - vdaea 3y ago
      I have used in the distant past DRM music files that counted how many plays I had left, but I remember not much of it. I think it was a Nokia phone. Maybe WMA files with PlayReady DRM?
    - anileated 3y ago
      That’s an interesting point. At first glance, the difference is that DRM-locked audio is not your property (or at least it does not feel like that, due to copying being zero cost) whereas the physical medium being worn down is.
      - halgir 3y ago
        That makes sense from a psychological perspective. People generally don't take kindly to artificial scarcity, while natural scarcity (such as number of plays being inherently limited by an otherwise good-enough medium) is much more acceptable, and sometimes even valued. An interesting anecdote that feels relevant is Wu-Tang Clan's album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, which was only released as a single physical copy, and no accompanying download or streaming option. That's an extreme form of artificial scarcity, but that became a part of the artwork itself.
shp0ngle 3y ago
In 30 years, people will be nostalgic for TikTok. I can't imagine that future but it will exist.
- INTPenis 3y ago
  It's not that they're nostalgic for tiktok, they're nostalgic for the interactions with other people that they had on tiktok. Any place where people can interact with others, chat, make jokes, memes and have fun together, will be a source of joy and nostalgia.
- xanderlewis 3y ago
  In 10 years I think there’ll be nostalgia for the TikTok of today (the early 2020s), even if it still exists. I feel nostalgia about things from 2014 already.
Findecanor 3y ago
I believe this is not just about nostalgia, or the collecting bug. It is also about the joy of interacting with tangible things. Touch, feel its texture, feel its weight, get tactile feedback, organising physical objects in a spatial world. This is simply the natural behaviour of the human animal. I don't collect Walkmans, but I do collect mechanical keyboards. In our community there isn't just old farts, but also just as many young adults who prefer tangible tactile devices in the age of touch screens.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- julian_t 3y ago
  As a guitarist, that's partly why I prefer actual effects pedals to adding a new plugin to an application. Physical cables to plug in and knobs to turn somehow improves the experience for me. But Walkmen? Nah, give me my MiniDisc any day ;-)
  - LegitShady 3y ago
    as a synth enjoyer I also love effects pedals, but my bank account doesn't :(
  - d0gsg0w00f 3y ago
    I have an old MiniDisc and a few disks. Every few years I'll load up a few MP3s to make sure it works. Gives me comfort to know it still works.
  - electrosphere 3y ago
    I have a small MiniDisc collection which I will never sell. Call it nostalgia but I really liked the process of creating a compilation using those limited 74 minutes (or 120 using SP2). In recent years I've created my own disk labels for my bare discs, another plus for the tangible nature of the medium.
- genman 3y ago
  It is also interesting how the accompanying picture tries to show how current mobile music listening experience is so complicated. I don't think it is. I just have wireless headphones (good ones) and my cell phone (that I would carry around anyway). No mess, no extra device to carry around and mess with. But of course there might be something in pressing the buttons, feeling different and special.
INTPenis 3y ago
I'm in love with some of the old tech, but I would not want to go back to those days. I'm more in love with the advantages of new tech. The only thing reminding me of the old days is my Miyoo mini+ where I play old SNES and GBA games.
paulcarroty 3y ago
Memories for sure, but the Walkman still beats any modern ~7" smartphone with a USB-C jack adapter in terms of usability.
veilmail 3y ago
[dead]
mikhael28 3y ago
I experienced the joy of ‘old’ technology recently when I bought a Game Boy Micro and Nintendo DS Lite. For hardware that came out in like 2006, it was so expertly designed. It gave me a lot of respect for Nintendo - now, I did sell them like 2 months later because they are total luxuries and unnecessary, but the DS truly brought back some great memories.
l72 3y ago
My primary way to play music is from my self-hosted navidrome[1] server with my collection of albums I've mostly purchased from bandcamp. I can stream it to many different devices at home or on the go. But sitting next to my bed is a Walkman (actually a $10 Jensen version) with a few of my favorite cassettes in the nightstand drawer. Granted, I listen to raw black metal, so the format fits the music well, but I really enjoy just popping in a cassette and hitting play. When I "metaltate", I listen to full albums and do not want to ever be interrupted or have skipping audio due to bluetooth or anything else. It is a really simple and great experience. Would I ever take my walkman with me or want to carry around a bunch of tapes on a trip? Of course not! But it does have a time and place that is valuable. When friends come over, we use either vinyl or my custom built RFID cards. There is more of a ceremony to digging through a physical stack of albums and being forced to listen to the album front to back. [1] https://www.navidrome.org/ https://www.navidrome.org/
- emdashcomma 3y ago
  Okay, I'm intrigued. Are the custom built RFID cards physical manifestations of albums which you can use to select and play a given album hosted with Navidrome? I'd love to see your setup/some examples.
  - l72 3y ago
    Yes, exactly! The goal was to make my digital collection physical. So a bunch of cheap RFID cards and a label printer. You can browse through cards and place them on an RFID reader hooked up to a raspberry pi (and my stereo) and it plays the full album. I have found it is great when people are over as everyone gets to dig through a huge collection of cards and take turns playing their favorites. I wrote some customer software but it is pretty basic. Basically read the ID of a card and play the corresponding album.

54 points by beardyw 3y ago

I think there is something to be said for an album’s native format, eg vinyl for Dark Side of the Moon, cassette for Metallica, CD for Britney Spears. To some extent the artist/production was optimized for the medium. Unrelatedly, I switched to collecting tapes because a) collecting is still fun and b) tapes are a lot cheaper than vinyl these days.

WalterBright 3y ago
When I record a vinyl album, I'll often leave in the needle drop and pickup noises.
- OccamsMirror 3y ago
  How often do you record from vinyl to another medium?
  - lb1lf 3y ago
    Not the OP, but if your taste in music (at least partially) flies under the radar of the streaming sites, you'll find yourself doing it on a regular basis. Doubly so if whatever music tickles your fancy was released a few decades ago. I've lots of albums at home which simply aren't released in the digital domain. Both classical and bossa nova, for the most part, but also the occasional pop/rock album. Many of those I've recorded to FLAC so that I can listen to them when anywhere but in front of my turntable.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    I have a lot of vinyl that was never released on CD. Things like the soundtrack to the Kirk Douglas movie "The Vikings".
10729287 3y ago
Also, it's sometimes difficult or even impossible to listen to the original mix of an album on streaming websites, if there's a remaster available.
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
  This annoys me so much! Some artists like The Beatles who have so many different mixes I just have to resort to using YouTube instead of Spotify. I wanted to listen to Please Please Me last week but Spotify gave me some horrible stereo remix that didn't even sound like the same music. I knew there were already two or remasters issued in mono, one from the 80 and two from the 00s, so figured I'd just append "mono" to my search and they'd all come up. Nope, just the most recent stereo remaster optimized for playback on phone speakers. Went to YouTube and I had the choice of every mix that had been published as well as a rip of the original vinyl pressing and a compilation of the outtakes. They're all published by the same company too and have the same rights holders so I don't understand why they choose to hide so much of their work.
  - 10729287 3y ago
    ... Because Spotify is an app to consume music, not to listen to it. They don't want to disturb the casual user who just want to listen to "that tune from the beatles". FLAC and Ripping groups/individuals is where you have to go if you care about mixes or little differences from a medium to another. It's such a joy to dig into an artist and find perfectly crafted rips of early 80s Japanese CDs of Michael Jackson and compare it with the vinyl releases, for example. I feel your pain, and it's partly why I'm more and more moving from those platforms. It was very useful at first but useful is not how we want to deal with our music.
    - AlecSchueler 3y ago
      I guess I just thought of it as an alternative to buying the CDs and that the same variety wouls be available. Back in the day I could go into my local CD shop and choose between the 2009 mono or stereo reissue. Now I have the 2022 stereo mix and nothing else. The album was produced with mono in mind so it seems perverse that it's not available that way. I guess in a few years from now we'll only be able to get the AI enhanced versions that correct the guitar tuning to concert pitch or whatever. I know I could go to "ripping groups" and everything but Spotify came with the promise of getting the catalogues I wanted with minimal work on my part, in exchange for a monetary payment.

anjel 3y ago

Nostalgia is just another form of depression -Abbie Hoffman

Moldoteck 3y ago
It's interesting in the sense that there are people that like these old things(walkmans/film cameras) even if they were born in smartphone era. I don't think we can call this nostalgia since they haven't even experienced all these things in the first place
- AshamedCaptain 3y ago
  Due to work I have to sometimes go fishing in development sites/garage sales/etc related to PC hardware from a couple decades ago (think DOS/win16 era). My experience is that I almost never see anyone who actually experienced those things: almost all these "retro" revivals are caused by young people being hyped by devices they _never_ experienced. So there's zero nostalgia. I don't know what thrill they get from it but I suppose it's "fake" nostalgia in the sense that they want to go back to a past that they have only heard about it (and thus idealized) in writing or in TV series. IMHO the people who actually experienced those devices for a long-time know to avoid them like the plague they are.
  - xanderlewis 3y ago
    I’ve felt for a long time that everyone is probably interested in the period of their birth, and particularly the years just before. There’s something uniquely weird feeling about that time — you were technically alive for some of it, and yet it’s totally alien to you. That’s why I think, for example, twenty year-olds today are interested in early 2000s fashion and computers.
  - Moldoteck 3y ago
    for me for example it's the tactile feedback. Smartphones are boring in tactile sense. On the other hand, taking a photo with a manual film camera is completely different: you must load/unload the film, be careful to not rotate the film too much when getting it back into container, manually adjusting focus, advancing the film and hearing all of this or even manually developing the film for bigger nerds. With walkmans it's probably the same but with cassetes - loading/unloading, connecting headset, all the mechanical sounds, different buttons, wheel volume controls, weird designs and colors. We just don't get this kind of tactile&sound feedback with modern laptops&smartphones and their colors are usually boring too, esp in recent years

SirHound 3y ago

I wonder if we have collectively worse memories than in the past partly for the fact our devices are constantly upgraded and replaced. Likewise fast fashion etc.

skydhash 3y ago
As someone who have barely been exposed to these technologies (it's already outdated by the time they got mainstream in the country, and the old is always competing with the new), I can agree with you. Right now, there is a firehose of options aimed at people and I believe we don't have the necessary framework to cope with these. I have some strong memories associated to particular tracks just because they were the only one I've been exposed to at those point of times. With streaming, everything kinda fade into the background, because everything new is instantly available (and there's something new every second). You can watch anything (so you watch nothing because you skip and switch when it's got a bit boring). It's gotten to a point that I'm restricting myself to a few options filtered some strict criteria for any media. I refrain myself from switching with a combination of friction and self discipline. My music listening is almost always from local media and album centered. I read fiction books only from my ereader and when I switch (slow because of the interface), that means that I don't intend to finish this particular book. This means that I have to either focus on the current item to consume it, or not consume it at all. And for those I do consume, it had lead me to a greater appreciation of the item, just because of the attention I've devoted to it.
- noir_lord 3y ago
  I just made the decision to opt out of devices. All my computing devices are linux PC's (except one Android phone) - despite the UI churn linux in 2024 is much the same as linux in 2004 underneath and I have a reasonable chance of properly troubleshooting any issues. With Linux you are always the `user` and not the `consumer`, it's a different paradigm. Despite been a life long nerd, Gadgets have never been a thing I liked so it was easy to just not buy them.
  - M95D 3y ago

WalterBright 3y ago

I left the 80's cassette stereo in my 80's car, and only play 80's mixtapes in it.

cottage-cheese 3y ago
I need to get my car's cassette player fixed, but can't find someone to do it.
- d0gsg0w00f 3y ago
  I don't think there's much of a market for repair anymore. If I were you I'd buy a few replacements on ebay and take them to a car stereo place. Ask them to keep swapping until one works

midasz 3y ago

I just miss listening to full albums. I know I can, there's nobody stopping me - but something changed in me I think. When I was a kid we didn't have a TV at home so evenings were sitting together and either having discussions or listening to music together (Opeth's Damnation and Deliverance were a staple). We had a room with a beamer that we explicitly used for movie nights. Now I've got a TV show on in the living room while checking stuff out on my phone and still feel like I should be doing more stuff.

nvarsj 3y ago
Getting off of Spotify has allowed me to switch back to album listening. Buy a record/cd player or for the more advanced rip CDs and use Plexamp (or purchase flac albums if available).
- yourusername 3y ago
  I listen to full albums on spotify all the time. Why would i need to buy anything to do that?
  - 10729287 3y ago
    Some people prefer the minimalist approach and avoid all the disturbance from streaming websites, especially playlists or podcasts or just the ability to bounce from an album to another as they make links between artists or period or whatever. I also prefer listening to my mp3/flac collection on an offline player. It helps focusing.
  - nicholassmith 3y ago
    You don't have to, but it does often feel like when you use Spotify that isn't what the app would like you to do. The initial load in heavily steers you towards using a playlist instead and whilst it will occasionally list albums on the home screen it's often broken and will give you a single instead. I'm a huge Spotify user and listen to a lot of albums on it, but there's definitely merits for a more focussed experience like physical media or a digital player.
  - 3y ago

karlkloss 3y ago

I don't miss those times. Walkmen were expensive, good cassettes were expensive, batteries were expensive, cassettes wore out sooner or later, the player's rubber parts wore out and then it damaged the tape, skipping was a pain in the back, sound quality was limited, recording/copying took forever, etc. Nah. As soon as mp3 arrived, I converted everything and never looked back.

anileated 3y ago
Wearing out of the physical medium makes music more valuable, and your experience directly depends on perceived value.
- halgir 3y ago
  Startup idea: DRM-locked audio files that can only be played once.
  - vdaea 3y ago
    I have used in the distant past DRM music files that counted how many plays I had left, but I remember not much of it. I think it was a Nokia phone. Maybe WMA files with PlayReady DRM?
  - anileated 3y ago
    That’s an interesting point. At first glance, the difference is that DRM-locked audio is not your property (or at least it does not feel like that, due to copying being zero cost) whereas the physical medium being worn down is.
    - halgir 3y ago
      That makes sense from a psychological perspective. People generally don't take kindly to artificial scarcity, while natural scarcity (such as number of plays being inherently limited by an otherwise good-enough medium) is much more acceptable, and sometimes even valued. An interesting anecdote that feels relevant is Wu-Tang Clan's album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, which was only released as a single physical copy, and no accompanying download or streaming option. That's an extreme form of artificial scarcity, but that became a part of the artwork itself.

shp0ngle 3y ago

In 30 years, people will be nostalgic for TikTok. I can't imagine that future but it will exist.

INTPenis 3y ago
It's not that they're nostalgic for tiktok, they're nostalgic for the interactions with other people that they had on tiktok. Any place where people can interact with others, chat, make jokes, memes and have fun together, will be a source of joy and nostalgia.
xanderlewis 3y ago
In 10 years I think there’ll be nostalgia for the TikTok of today (the early 2020s), even if it still exists. I feel nostalgia about things from 2014 already.

Findecanor 3y ago

I believe this is not just about nostalgia, or the collecting bug. It is also about the joy of interacting with tangible things. Touch, feel its texture, feel its weight, get tactile feedback, organising physical objects in a spatial world. This is simply the natural behaviour of the human animal. I don't collect Walkmans, but I do collect mechanical keyboards. In our community there isn't just old farts, but also just as many young adults who prefer tangible tactile devices in the age of touch screens.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
julian_t 3y ago
As a guitarist, that's partly why I prefer actual effects pedals to adding a new plugin to an application. Physical cables to plug in and knobs to turn somehow improves the experience for me. But Walkmen? Nah, give me my MiniDisc any day ;-)
- LegitShady 3y ago
  as a synth enjoyer I also love effects pedals, but my bank account doesn't :(
- d0gsg0w00f 3y ago
  I have an old MiniDisc and a few disks. Every few years I'll load up a few MP3s to make sure it works. Gives me comfort to know it still works.
- electrosphere 3y ago
  I have a small MiniDisc collection which I will never sell. Call it nostalgia but I really liked the process of creating a compilation using those limited 74 minutes (or 120 using SP2). In recent years I've created my own disk labels for my bare discs, another plus for the tangible nature of the medium.
genman 3y ago
It is also interesting how the accompanying picture tries to show how current mobile music listening experience is so complicated. I don't think it is. I just have wireless headphones (good ones) and my cell phone (that I would carry around anyway). No mess, no extra device to carry around and mess with. But of course there might be something in pressing the buttons, feeling different and special.

INTPenis 3y ago

I'm in love with some of the old tech, but I would not want to go back to those days. I'm more in love with the advantages of new tech. The only thing reminding me of the old days is my Miyoo mini+ where I play old SNES and GBA games.

paulcarroty 3y ago

Memories for sure, but the Walkman still beats any modern ~7" smartphone with a USB-C jack adapter in terms of usability.

veilmail 3y ago

[dead]

mikhael28 3y ago

I experienced the joy of ‘old’ technology recently when I bought a Game Boy Micro and Nintendo DS Lite. For hardware that came out in like 2006, it was so expertly designed. It gave me a lot of respect for Nintendo - now, I did sell them like 2 months later because they are total luxuries and unnecessary, but the DS truly brought back some great memories.

l72 3y ago

My primary way to play music is from my self-hosted navidrome[1] server with my collection of albums I've mostly purchased from bandcamp. I can stream it to many different devices at home or on the go. But sitting next to my bed is a Walkman (actually a $10 Jensen version) with a few of my favorite cassettes in the nightstand drawer. Granted, I listen to raw black metal, so the format fits the music well, but I really enjoy just popping in a cassette and hitting play. When I "metaltate", I listen to full albums and do not want to ever be interrupted or have skipping audio due to bluetooth or anything else. It is a really simple and great experience. Would I ever take my walkman with me or want to carry around a bunch of tapes on a trip? Of course not! But it does have a time and place that is valuable. When friends come over, we use either vinyl or my custom built RFID cards. There is more of a ceremony to digging through a physical stack of albums and being forced to listen to the album front to back. [1] https://www.navidrome.org/ https://www.navidrome.org/

emdashcomma 3y ago
Okay, I'm intrigued. Are the custom built RFID cards physical manifestations of albums which you can use to select and play a given album hosted with Navidrome? I'd love to see your setup/some examples.
- l72 3y ago
  Yes, exactly! The goal was to make my digital collection physical. So a bunch of cheap RFID cards and a label printer. You can browse through cards and place them on an RFID reader hooked up to a raspberry pi (and my stereo) and it plays the full album. I have found it is great when people are over as everyone gets to dig through a huge collection of cards and take turns playing their favorites. I wrote some customer software but it is pretty basic. Basically read the ID of a card and play the corresponding album.