Adventures in electroland

Last weekend I had had enough, my mp3 had finally driven me mad. It is an mpio FY 100, about two years old. The player itself is ok; it is easy to use, supports directories, includes a radio and is not too big or heavy. Ideal for sports. Unfortunately copying files onto the player is a nightmare. The software that came with it had so many bugs, I don't know where to start. And the fixes I downloaded made my PC crash (and I mean crash: blue screen, nothing goes, switch off the power and cross fingers nothing is corrupted forever). And last but not least it only has about 125 MB memory. That's about 30 songs.

So last Saturday I decided to invest into a new mp3 without bugs and with larger memory. I spent about two hours in Saturn, one of Germany's largest department store chain for electronic goods and cds etc. Two hours to make up my mind which of the about 10 players within my price range I wanted. I chose a Trek Store i.Beat fun with 1 GB memory. Very lightweight and not too expensive. Bad decision!

During the week I used it a couple of times in the morning on my way to work and in the evening on the treadmill. The colour came off in some places immediately after first use. Then it started to malfunction. Just stopped playing in the middle of a song. Sometimes the player switched off completely, sometimes only the sound died. I changed the battery, changed the headphones. The problem remained, so today I went to take it back.

When I explained what was wrong with it, the guy at the customer complaint desk did not look very surprised. So I came to the logical conclusion that this must be a common problem with this particular brand. Since there were other things I did not like about it (no directory support for example), I chose a different one as a replacment, a Maxfield G-Flash Metal. It "only" has 512 MB, but I find that's enough for my needs. It was a special offer and cheaper than the one I had taken back. The difference was exactly the price of an armband case for the Maxfield, so I took that too (they don't return money). Fingers crossed this one doesn't play up after a couple of days too.

There were more adventures in electroland last week: After what must have been 15 years without one I bought a turntable. It's a Pro-ject Debut III in bright blue. That's why it was reduced in price. Unfortunately, at home I found out that my hi-fi unit and modern turntables do not communicated without a preamplifier as a translator inbetween them. So next day I had to go back to the shop to buy one of those. Of course, this wasn't reduced in price and ate up all I had saved on the turntable itself.

But listening to the first record all was forgotten. For the premiere I chose the Swordfish version of The Lilac Time by The Lilac Time.

It's different from the Fontana one

(not just the cover) and most people say, it's better. Currently the Fontana version is more my cup of tea, but I do change my mind about things like that.

CDs and mp3s will never be the same listening experience as vinyl. It is unbeatable and I had almost forgotten how much better it is.