Oh My Darling Clementine

[lydy]

When I whined about wanting music and iTunes making me cry, Laurel suggested an app called Clementine. I downloaded the most recent version, which totally didn't work. Then I cried some more. Then DDB looked at the web page, determined that my OS would only play with a previous version, which I downloaded, and there was joy in Mudville.

It's really nice. It loads the entire music library very, very fast. (A previous version of iTunes took several hours.) It allows me to create playlists, and seems to have pretty good functionality. Since I don't want very much, it has pretty much everything I want. I wish it had the WinAmp option to "play random tracks for X amount of time, then quit" but it doesn't seem to. Although, you know, it might. It has all sorts of things, NONE OF THEM DOCUMENTED. Fuck me blue. Guys, you have all these cool things, TELL ME ABOUT THEM. Would it kill you to put out a user manual? Really?

I spent some time looking at a sound solution, as well. Tinny doesn't really do my MacBook Pro speakers justice. Tiny tinny and really not very loud comes closer. Poked around at MicroCenter and Best Buy and Amazon. Bluetooth speakers seem to be running $60 and up. And up. And up. Not this is unreasonable, but still, it's money. Another solution, getting a bluetooth dongle, and attaching it to an existing pair of speakers, looks to be about $30. I dug out my very old external speaker system. It's a Cambridge SoundWorks system with a subwoofer and two tiny speakers. It was probably about $50 ten years ago. The ivory colored plastic has not so much yellowed as browned. However, they work. And while I wouldn't call it _good_ sound, it's way, way better than my built-in speakers. At the moment, I'm just plugging it into my computer (it has a really long cord, and this makes it pretty easy). I was thinking of getting the $30 dongle so that I could reposition the speakers, but you know, the current placement is absolutely adequate given the quality. And, free. Well, not ten years ago, of course, but free now.

Technology and I seem to be doing well, this week. Wonder what next week will bring.

Comments

[guppiecat]

You might be able to fudge the "play random songs then stop" with a "play random songs" in the app and using a separate app to shutdown at a specific time of night.

Maybe http://goodnight.jakobbossek.de/ would be helpful.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Do you have an old stereo receiver lying around your place? If so, try plugging that into your sound ports and attaching an old pair of speakers. You'll probably need a Y-cable, since most modern computers have just one sound port. You'd be surprised what nice sound you can get out of even the cheapest receiver and speakers.

[riverrocks.livejournal.com]

I've been really happy with my bem Bluetooth sound cube. I'm not super discerning about sound but I physically cannot stand tinny and this thing solved my problems. It's portable, has to be recharged (but can work while plugged into the power source), and it can get good and loud but doesn't have to be. I got mine at costco for $40.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Can you stand in-ear headphones?

monoprice.com has model 8320, which are in-ear monitors. They're eight bucks; they're very good. Not even slightly tinny.

Model 8323 is the full over-the-ear headphones; they've also got a bunch of bluetooth speakers for reasonable prices though I can't say as I have much affection for speakers in that range.

Clementine does random playlists; where the bar with "search", "library", "files", etc. goes, you want "Library", the top entry of which should be "smart playlists". You can pick dynamic or a number of tracks. (It's a music player. It supposed to be so simple it doesn't need documentation.)

[lydy.livejournal.com]

So, what does "dynamic" mean?

Any clue with the Mood thingies are?

I have tolerable ear buds, but there are times when I don't want things in my ears. The speaker solution, for instance, allows DDB and I to watch something on my computer and actually, you know, _hear_ it. (Sometimes, Pamela and Eric have a date, and they sleep in the media room, so if David and I want to watch Netflix, we have to use a laptop. Such are the perils of polyamory. Be warned.)

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Dynamic means it keeps going forever, it'll keep putting new random selections on the bottom of the playlist.

Mood thingies? the moodbar visualizations? to give you a quick idea of what kind of song, I think; black is silence, the brighter and closer together the more auditory intensity, and the colours do have something to do with the auditory input but it's not completely straightforward.

Speakers do simplify "anywhere in the room", to be sure. It's just so much easier to get earphones where bagpipes sound plausible than to pay for speakers as will do that. (Easy to find, hard to pay for, is lamentably true about audio.)