For a while now, I've wanted to take steps to engage with technology more intentionally. I've found myself tired from algorithms on various media platforms - feeding me a limited selection of the content available on the platform, thus being terrible for discovery, while simultaneously making me think about what I want to watch, what I want to listen to if I want to engage with more than the handful of options shoved in my face on the app or platform's startup. But because engaging with more than those handful of options puts the world at my fingertips, it activates the paradox of choice. And all the while, owning none of what I'm engaging with. Particularly with music, I'd find myself in cycles of listening to the same sets of songs buy not really listening - not really enjoying them the way I did when I had a more currate collection of cassettes, CDs, or even MP3s. Listening to music had become such a passive background activity that I began to loathe the act of getting in the car and selecting an album or an artist to play on Spotify.
And so, I followed in the footsteps of what I had done with videogames when I purchased a new-to-me 3DS off of Ebay. I started buying CDs and vinyl. I turned off my phone and started listening to NPR in the car. Or if I did want to listen to something in particulr, I'd more often pick an album that I owned to play and play it straight through - even if I was streaming (since when did they get rid of CD players in new cars? Did that happen when they added touch screens everywhere???). I followed artists on Bandcamp and joined listening parties for new releases. And finally, after doing some 'research' on Reddit, I decided on a digital audio player (DAP) and some in-ear monitors (IEMs) that I wanted to get. And here we are. As I'm first writing this page, it just arrived in the mail today. And I started this website (though I haven't used it much yet) for the same kinds of escape-the-algorithm and "engaging with technology more intentionally" reasons stated above, so I figured this was as good a time as any to, you know, actually write something here ^^; .
According to Wikipedia, DAPs came around in the late 1990s after the MP3 codec (simple) was created. MP3 is a lossy compression algorithm (simple), meaning that it cuts out some of the data to reduce file sizes. Since human perception has limitations and can be manipulated, lossy compression algorithms can still be used to play back fairly accurate reproductions of instruments and voices. It does reduce the accuracy of the sound, but attempts to do so in ways that are less perceptible and don't heavily impact the listening experience. Sort of reminds me of vector versus bitmap graphics.
I still have my first digital audio player, one of those little MP3 players where you uncap one end and there's your USB-A dongle, with a black-and-white screen and no backlight. I loaded it with all my dad's Celtic Woman CDs and the Forrest Gump soundtrack. My music tastes have evolved and expanded since then, but I was just as excited opening my new HIFI Walker H2 as I was my first cassette player, or CD player, or that little plastic-cased piece of magic that was my MP3 player - letting me play back and pick songs from more than one album at a time.
I did a bit of 'research', primarily on Reddit, to land on this model. It wasn't too hard - turns out touch screens are pretty ubiquitous and one of the primary design features I wanted was to have tactile buttons, preferably with no touch screen at all. And so I landed on the HIFI WALKER H2. It's heavier than I was expecting, and feels really good to hold in my hand. The tactile feedback from the click wheel feels fantastic to me, and the buttons aren't bad either. I have to press them a little harder than I would have expected, but I imagine that will be a good thing once I have the player in use to avoid accidently skipping or pausing tracks, or otherwise impacting my listening experience. I noticed the bottom right corner of the player even has a cut out where I can thread one of my Wiimote wrist straps if I want, so that it's harder for me to drop the player.
On the stock firmware, I won't be able to say anything, as I quickly learned from browsing Reddit that I wanted to Rockbox this player.
My player has firmware version 2.3, so I'll be using hardware revision hw4 for my