GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Off Air Audio
In the Thread: What to do in office?

Post Subject: Surviving in Bagdad...Posted by jessie.dazzle on: 4/21/2011

I'm right there with you, temporarily installed in the middle of a Bagdad intersection.

So, one day not too long ago I slipped out during lunch and picked up a pair of decent, closed-back, full-size, fairly antisocial looking headphones (ATH M-50s) and a 2TB internal drive. Internal because 1) they are cheaper, and 2) because I didn't want to have to lock the drive up or take it home every night to prevent theft.

But I did take the new drive home that night and loaded it with a significant portion of my home music library, all in full resolution. Returning to the Bagdad intersection the follow morning, I stuffed it in the case of the HP work station and downloaded iTunes. Surprisingly, straight out of the on-board sound card, the sound is pretty damn good and allows me to concentrate in the midst of what I call the salad bowl.

However, here the musical journey is interrupted every day, all morning long. Count yourself lucky that you are not working in France; it is a French custom upon arrival at the work place, to make the rounds and robotically say good morning to everyone, regardless of whether you know them or not, and to accompany the greeting with a robotic hand shake and, if you're feeling particularly benevolent, a brief robotic look in the eye (!)... I mean everyone in the whole damn place, other than me, the anti-christ, makes the rounds without exception (its 9:30 a.m. here and I had to pause in the middle of that sentence and shake the hands of two arrivals). It is mainly a means of putting a spotlight on arrival time. I really must learn that expression that shows (pause for another handshake!) concern for what I see... Please do post a photo. Meanwhile, I've pulled the monitor right up into my face and set up a fan with exposed spinning blades (removed the protective cage) in the middle of the "hand shake reach zone" over my desk.

Anyway, you might want to try the HDD solution; portable external or internal (which is super convenient these days as most PCs now use slide-out drive mounts). This would allow you to listen to your really long FM recordings in native res, as most on-board sound cards now do more than 16/44.1.

Really amazingly good sound is possible if you're willing to invest in a dedicated headphone amp with built-in USB DAC; I did this for my home workstation and use it with planar-magnetic phones for late night listening/working. The rig is small enough to bring to work and I would if potential theft were not an issue.

jd*

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