Lost in their iPod world
Two hip young woman in their mid-20s board the northbound Red Line at Chicago at about 9 p.m., no doubt fresh from their law school class at Loyola University.
They giggle and laugh and take seats opposite each other near the doors. They each pull out an iPod and settle in for a musical interlude after a night of arguing torts.
At North and Clybourn, one gal's neighbor exits and she gestures for her friend to come sit by her. But it was too late. Someone else had grabbed the seat. They shrug at each other and giggle some more.
The guy opposite the other gal notices this and gets up to offer his seat. They gesture wildly and decline the kind offer.
The two friends are happy enough, lost in their iPod world.
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I don't know what I'd do without my ipod. The ride to & from work seems so boring without musical accompaniment.
Posted by: JMP | May 02, 2006 at 11:10 AM
We're all going to be so deaf.
Posted by: T.Taylor | May 02, 2006 at 03:30 PM
what? -pulls out his ibuds- you have to speak up!
Posted by: smallhalo | May 02, 2006 at 03:43 PM
I'm seeing more and more people with those real Sony headphones you can get for $20 at Best Buy. It's totally the way to go...they sound a lot better and don't hurt your ears.
Posted by: Walrus | May 02, 2006 at 10:46 PM
Short of a generation 5 iPod, especially the Nano and surprisingly, the Shuffle, or an earlier generation with headphones connected to an external portable amp through the line out, iPods sound horrible compared to Creative, Cowon and Samsumg players.
It's just so funny how self satisfied iPod owners are, with their shoddy white headphones (that let all the ambient noise in, thereby further reducing the amount of music they can perceive), low quality MP3s and inferior players that actually sound a good deal worse than pretty much every portable CD player from 10 or 12 years ago.
Wow, so you have 100 CDs worth of music along with you, even though it's of such low quality that you're missing a lot of the actual music. But then, it's more important to be able to drop the names of the artists than to actually hear the music they've composed, right?
Posted by: insufferable audiophile | May 03, 2006 at 11:04 AM
wow insufferable, and the IPOD OWNERS are the self-satisfied ones?
Posted by: kt | May 03, 2006 at 01:14 PM
Well, better to be self satisfied about spending your hard earned money on something that works amazing well than to be self satisfied despite the fact that you've paid a ton of money just to be an iSheep and have an inferior product to boot...
Posted by: insufferable audiophile | May 03, 2006 at 01:28 PM
whew...lucky for me, my ipod was free! i have upgraded my headphones...so I can remain self-satisified without feeling like i've spent a ton of money on something. nice :D
Posted by: JMP | May 03, 2006 at 02:13 PM
The way audiophiles drone on about the supposed weakness of the iPods' sound, you'd think we are listening to something like an 8 track. Of course, it's nowhere near that bad. And even if it was, what's wrong with that? I fell in love with music listening to the mono AM radios of the 70s, not in a audio center's showroom.
Posted by: Moko | May 03, 2006 at 11:14 PM
I get annoyed when people claim that MP3 are worse that standard CD in audio quality. Well ok that's true but it isn't really noticable unless you're really paying attention to it. So for the majority of us we can listen to our MP3's and not worry about loss of quality since it sounds the same to our ears by and large. And the biggest strike against this argument is that all the sound engineers and sound designers in this city that I know or know of are some of the heaviest users of MP3's around. So if folks whose job is to make sounds as perfect as possible use "low quality" MP3's then it must not be that important.
Posted by: David | May 04, 2006 at 12:01 AM
like anyone can tell the difference between an mp3 or wav file while on a bus or train anyway. i can't even hear the music when i'm underground never mind able to discern the source.
Posted by: kt | May 04, 2006 at 08:55 AM
I agree with both insufferable audiophile and kt. I personally don't like ipods, great if you do, but I don't, other companies make better products, but Mr. Jobs did such a great job marketing his product, others have a much smaller market share; (I am an owner of Creative and Rio products at one time--which since have gone out of business). I don't know if your talking about the Sony canalphones the literally go right into your ear canal. They sound great, and places like Amazon have them for around $25 now, but they block out all noise around you.
I have a pair, but I won't use them on the el or bus, as I want to be aware of things around me while riding the el.
Regarding kt, I rip at a higher bitrate, but with all the noise around you, how can you tell the difference.
Posted by: audiophileaussi | May 04, 2006 at 10:20 AM
i actually rip everything as a wav file since i'm burning from vinyl anyway. i had a creative labs player that i loooooooved until it was stolen. i got the ipod as a gift and am happy with it for the most part. i don't like those sony canalphones, the sound is too bright for me.
Posted by: kt | May 04, 2006 at 10:51 AM
There are better music players than iPods. Creative and Sony are my favorites. I had a Creative music player and own currrently a Sony PSP as my portable entertainment system. The only drawback is the price of flash cards.
Posted by: Alexander | December 12, 2006 at 03:47 PM