Digging up sound memories to relive

In search of portable sound

It is probably two decades ago, I bought a Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen, an MP3 player with a 6GB hard disk, this was before the Apple iPod took off and became the mainstay of portable music players. Bundled with the jukebox was a copy-protected compendium of classical music that took up over half the available space on the disk.

I probably erased one folder of music before I found the means of extracting the classical music collection into a portable format that I could playback on my computer. With time, I extended my classical music collection, ripping CDs I had bought for portability sake. Unfortunately, not all CDs automatically populated the tracks from the Gracenote CDDB as it was known then.

Volumes of excess material

Over time, I had compiled a classical music collection, all my music CDs, a whole catalogue of preachers' sermons and exhortations, along with different audio bibles, the full King James Version (KJV), the New Testament in the New International Version (NIV) and the whole bible in the Message (MSG) translation. These versions belong in different areas of translation and interpretation, the KJV which is close to literal, the NIV being somewhat intermediate and the MSG is like a paraphrase.

Blog - Good Samaritan Values - The Renewing Of Your Mind – Written in 2013 with an overview of types of English bible translations.

By then, I upgraded to a Creative Nomad Jukebox III, a friend gave me one with a 20GB hard disk, I soon ran out of space on that too, I began to juggle what I needed from what was not immediately necessary. A few years later, the jukeboxes were too cumbersome and I plumbed for a miniature Creative Zen Mozaic 8GB MP3 Player with dimensions 1.3 (depth) x 4 (width) x 8 (length) in cm, it still lives, some 12 years on.

Properly cataloguing sound files

I used to like listening to the Gospels in KJV, there were times I had it playing in the background and found myself imagining I was just walking down the same street where Jesus was having a conversation with an audience that included me.

Managing 1189 chapters from 66 books of the bible in audio format, wasn’t easy as the publishers made a shoddy job of the MP3 tagging. This being the metadata that allowed the MP3 file to be properly identified and categorised. So, I found myself retagging the files, setting out the books as albums and the chapters as chronological tracks.

It would have been easier to merge the chapters into one track per book, but the granularity in seeking specific sections would have been lost. I studiously did this for my music albums and other audio collections too.

Too many old memories

Now, why I am on this journey into the past. I acquired a while ago the full boxset of Yes, Minister, and Yes, Prime Minister, political satire from the 1980s but could not find where I had stored them. With portable hard disks all around the place, some probably with stiffened spindles for the lack of use, I began to plug them in to review their contents.

In the process, I found all my audio bibles, my broader music collection, the Yes, Minister series, some old training material and a picture I had not seen for probably 8 years now. The picture did bring back some old memories, but there was nothing I could do but sigh, he died a decade ago and someone has fully and fittingly taken the place I was unable to relinquish to explore the opportunity for love until early last year. The whole audio and video catalogue is being uploaded to the cloud.

A time to relive

I guess the strange thing about life is the many moments that create a complex story of wanting to experience the new, whilst having some other attachment to the old. The ability to conflate the past and present into another moment to cherish.

Childhood memories of places that brought happiness, peace, and joy, some other time in life where some activity had its serenity and calmness, then a present that offers the scope to relive and settle into a bliss almost unbelievably complete.

It is strange that being both a creature of habit, with a curiosity for the unknown and a quest for knowledge. You wonder when the mind quietens down. Yet, I find peace in music, simple detective shows, and railway documentaries. Sometimes, I just switch off everything and go to sleep.

iDumbo is going iDeaf

iDesign for iTrendies

I was just beginning to settle down into the notion that one of the best things about the iPod might be because those things do not have iJumbo headphones.

In the pre-iPod days, there were many with their collections of CDs carted about for playback in their portable CD players who had headphones that make you think elephant ears were small.

Nothing wrong with that, however, when you got on the bus or train the drone of the vehicle engines could not drown out that frustrating monotonous note that you heard without being able to piece together the whole music.

It was like there was not enough to give you the persistence of hearing to help you concentrate on other things.

Subconsciously to annoying knowledgeable reaction you find that the noise is more a distraction because of the disorder, a complete nuisance at that.

The quest for the MP3 grail

Now, I belong to the pre-iPod generation when looking for a solution involved good research rather than following the latest fad or trend.

I had acquired motivational speaking material from those 7-ways ideas to faith affirmation talk that you get from Pentecostal circles.

The MP3 could be played back on my computer at home or work, but not on my CD player – so the research began for a player that could play back MP3 files – that was in 2001.

Not only did I want one that could playback but it should be able to read MP3 tags – these being labels that allow information input of track name, track number, album, artist, and genre and so on.

In the process I got the MP3BookHelper application which allows prodigious amounts of tagging and tagging formats including the renaming of files to the tag information.

Then I had to get an MP3 merger that allows fragments of related and consecutive MP3 material to be merged into one contiguous file.

TotalRecorder allowed me to record streaming audio to audio files with the MP3 format using the Lame converter.

Before long I had a library of MP3 files for which a CD based MP3 player would not suffice having the limit of 640 to 700 megabytes.

I needed a multi-gigabyte MP3 player and in the end, I got the Creative DAP Jukebox also known as the Creative Nomad, the more recent offering is NOMAD Jukebox Zen which can handle 20 or 60GB.

This had 6GB of space, could handle all audio file formats, could read all MP3 tags, manageable on both device and from computer.

There was a community of users who provided tools, accessories and ideas about how to get the best out of my jukebox, in fact, I though it was quite hip to see a female passenger with a jukebox only a few months after I got mine.

iJuggernaut of music

Before you knew it, out came the Apple juggernaut and the history of MP3 players was re-written.

So, everyone who seems to be carrying their music has a plastic-looking “ergonomic” device with a set of usually-white ear-plug headphones, it has become so common, it is common.

So, twice today, having thought the design of the headphones had the avoidance of social nuisance built in; I was completely wrong.

Having an iPod with iDesign headphones does not stop iDiots from keeping the volume at a reasonable level for their hearing.

The generation of young trendy people who have sown for the future a guarantee of being hard of hearing leading to deafness early in middle-age are many and sad, besides generally lacking in good social and community skills.

There is no telling iDumbo that iPods are really for personal entertainment; they should keep the volume down.