[pct-l] on-trail music

[edmond at mydogmeg.net (Edmond Meinfelder)]

At 12:00 PM 1/25/2004 -0800, Judson Brown wrote:
>I'm interested in getting an ipod or something similar for my hike next
>summer. What are people using out there?

On my through-hike, I carried nothing. By mid-summer I desperately missed 
music to the point of catching myself interestedly listening to terrible 
pop stars in town stores. If music is important to you, I'd say take it. 
There's no reason to miss something you do not have to miss just to satisfy 
someone else's sensibilities.

I looked at the iPod and other MP3 players. Most have an annoying feature: 
8-hour battery life. In the iPod, this is very annoying as it has an 
internal lithium battery which cannot be replaced, meaning you have to 
recharge in towns (it takes a few hours  to recharge, too). Other 
high-capacity MP3 players have replaceable batteries, but they are heavier 
and carrying scores of batteries is unappealing.

The low-capacity memory card MP3 players also have around an 8-hour limit, 
but the low capacity is a major limitation. Once, I carried a small RIO 64 
MP3 Player but found the few songs I could take too repetitive for a long hike.

The latest MP3 CD players are inexpensive and have excellent battery life 
(80-100 hours on alkaline AAs, should be more with lithium) and 1 CD can 
easily hold around 10 hours of music.

However, lighter options exist. There are 3" MP3 CD players with comparable 
battery life and each disc holds about 3 hours of music in MP3 format 
(assuming 128 kbps stereo). Minidisc Players have a higher capacity at 5 
hours in LP4 mode and 2 hours in their LP2 mode and battery lives close to, 
but not quite up to better CD MP3 players.

On my through hike, some people carried simple audio CD players. A few 
carried mini-disc players. Most carried nothing.

Tangent