Sloanie 101: OPD

Portaphile: Portable Audio Enthusiast

Those who know me know about this disorder that I have. I not only love music but also how I listen to music, and portable audio is a bit of an obsession of mine.

I suppose it had it’s roots in my early days. I don’t recall just how old I was when I recieved my first cassette walkman for Christmas– it was made by Toshiba. I had to have been in my first few years of elementary school, and at that time the only tapes I probably had were Niel Diamond, Lionel Richie, and maybe a California Raisins CD… good times, hehe. Towards the end of my elementary school days I began acquiring more pop tapes and had begun making mix tapes. Ah, mix tapes, that’s a whole other subject. Needless to day I claim to be of the mix tape generation.

In 7th grade I got my first Discman– the Sony D-11, started acquiring CDs and continued making mix tapes for use in the car as well as for other people. By 9th grade I had what I thought was a pretty pimp Sony Sports Discman with skip protection. That thing didn’t leave my side all through high school– riding the bus, studying in the library, riding on road trips– I always listened to it.

Fast forward to 1999– in Korea with nothing but a crappy tape player, I bought a Panasonic CD player with an LCD remote and began acquiring CDs there. Later that year, I became obsessed with MiniDisc. I’d seen it years earlier (1992-ish when it was brand new), but now it was within reach as I could go to Korean electronics stores and actually see and hold them. In December of ’99 I got my first Sony MD recorder– the MZ-R90. I was in heaven– the best of both worlds: digital like CD players with tracks, etc., and recordable like cassettes– and quite a bit smaller than either! At this point Obsessive Portaphile Disorder (OPD) began to be apparent– I spent any time I could recording mix discs and listening to them.

When I returned from Korea I got a job, and with cash to spare, OPD started to take even more control. From 2001 – 2003 I bought a number of different MiniDisc units as well as different headphones. OPD was in full bloom. I frequented web sites discussing various technologies, portables, and headphones.

Soon other portable audio formats began to mature and in the Fall of ’03 I purchased a hard-drive based mp3 player made by a Korean company named iRiver (the fact that it was Korean had little to do with my decision to buy it), after which OPD settled down for a while…

Well, it’s been flaring up again. I ordered a bunch of CDs today– probably about 10 total. Yeah. And since I often don’t want to wait to listen to them (meaning I often don’t want to take the time to create MP3s or MiniDiscs before listening to CDs), I went out and bought yet another piece of portable audio electronics– the Sony D-NE300 CD/MP3/Atrac player (pictured above with the Sony MDR-EX71 earphones, which are pretty decent for their price range of about $35).

Sadly, this setup represents the cheaper end of this hobby / disorder!

To be continued…