Music Experience


Biking + Music

 

On a bike a listener with headphones would appreciate being able to interact with the device without having to look elsewhere or lose their balance.

My current iPod + case + headphones combination is decent for bike use. Here are some pros and cons...

 


Computer - Home Stereo

 

In this situation the entertainment can be either personal or group oriented depending on the volume of the computer and stereo receiver.

Computer music software can be interacted with very precisely...we have keyboards and mice to interact with software, in practice. ...but theoretically, any other device that connects to a computer could control the music.

Ideally the software can seamlessly catalogue songs and allow you to search. More sophisticated music players allow us to import CD's into the computer and even grab the song titles from an online database without much added user interaction.

Certain bonus features of truly excellent music players...ahem foobar2000....http://foobar2000.org...are that the user can customize the appearance to his or her liking but more importantly the functionality. A good program has basic functionality: plays an mp3 file.

The computer running the software should be able to handle holding large amounts of data, should the user possess a massive music library.

For parties, sometimes visualizers and other eye-candy are useful features, but should be easily turned off to conserve power (if on a laptop).

 

The stereo itself. Takes in an audio signal, amplifies it to power speakers. It's purpose is relatively simple, but depending on if you have a home theatre set-up and require video switching, your device may need to handle many different types of audio streams and video streams and have to combine them. But for now the only features I ever use are the POWER button, Volume knob...occasionally needing to turn the subwoofer down I might press the button that cycles through different Bass levels. ...pretty simple interaction.