Discman

I know I listed ~scape dubstep compilation Round Black Ghosts on my last entry, but listening to it made me realize something: i missed my Discman.

That's right. The Sony Discman—the bright, shiny yellow apparatus that lays dormant in so many closets and drawers, or has been simply dumped by the majority of Zen and Zune users (I am assuming that all of you have one of these fine products)—still has value. To whom? To those who listen to music that doesn't hold-up gracefully under digital compression. The dubstep genre certainly qualifies. So does most finely crafted house, techno and any kind of music/sound construct leaning towards subtlety. I even ran a side-by-side comparison—you really don't have to be an audiophile to tell the difference.

I know that this isn't news, but I think if anyone reading this cares enough to conduct similar tests they will see the limitations of convenient formats. Of course this all goes out the window when FLAC becomes more accessible. But until then, don't settle for 30% of the product—especially when sound production is the focus of the music in question.