This a somewhat late response to solderpunks phlog entry on "Actually

Listing to Music again" [1].

I've never been a huge fan of Spotify, but the kids use it a lot, so we

have a family account. Previously, I have used Deezer, but I was never

able to find or get a Linux client, and even less so a client for

FreeBSD. Streaming works great for music discovery, so my primary usage

is checking out new albums and deciding which albums to buy.

Other than that, my primary source of music are ripped CDs. I recently

made the transition to FLAC files, so I'm in the process of ripping my

CD collection once more. Adios, MP3 and OGG.

My master colletion of digital music is stored on my FreeNAS machine,

and from there I copy the whole or parts of the collection to my daily

used machines. I also have a (not so recent) copy on a microSD card on

my phone for easy access. The FreeNAS collection is also accessible

through Sonic (I have setup using duckdns.org to be able to access my

colletion from outside my home). So sometimes I use the Ultrasonic app

to access my online collection. Kind of my own streaming service.

Recently, I bought some second-hand Jazz CDs, and I wanted to dive

deeper into listening to these without any distraction. That's what I

use my Sansa Clip for. I've written about it in an earlier phlog post

[2]. It stores only 8GB of music, which is enough for a handful of

albums in FLAC format. The sound quality is fine, and I finally can

listen to albums again and again, until I'm fed up and transfer new

albums on the Sansa Clip. I guess that's the kind of listening that also

Solderpunk was talking about.

After reading Solderpunks phlog post, I started looking at MiniDisc

players, just for fun and without any intension to buy one. I never had

one in the 90s, mostly because they were way too expensive in the old

days, so I had my cassette Sony Walkman which worked quite

well. Unfortunately, it was stolen at some point, and I never replaced

it.

This week, a Sony MZ-R700, accidently the same model as Solderpunk

bought, appeared on the local craigslist eqvialent, in perfect shape and

at half the price than the players I looked at before. So I bought it.

I'm still waiting for the package to arrive, but here I am: a Sony

MiniDisc walkman owner. It will be interesting to see where this goes

and how this will affect my music listeing habits. My best guess is that

it will replace my Sansa Clip at some point. Let's see.

[1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/phlog/actually-listening-to-music-again-2.txt

[2] gopher://jan.bio/phlog/20190922-music-library-cleanup/

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