Portable speakers for the outdoors?
Re: Portable speakers for the outdoors?
Hey Potato, good to see you back. I really enjoyed following your PCT blog.
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retired jerry
- Posts: 14424
- Joined: May 28th, 2008, 10:03 pm
Re: Portable speakers for the outdoors?
Wow! Potato has returned. Yeah, I've followed your PCT blog a little.
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Rancid9999
- Posts: 32
- Joined: April 2nd, 2012, 11:39 am
Re: Portable speakers for the outdoors?
NOOOOoooooo!!!!
Re: Portable speakers for the outdoors?
Rance, the gentleman who started this conversation is a PCT thru-hiker. A PCT thru-hike traverses many long stretches of very, very empty trails. It also lasts, on average for 5 straight months. Under those circumstances it is conceivable that using a set of speakers in camp at low volume will disturb no one, and certainly would not appreciably diminish one's opportunities for silence and solitude.
I do agree that, because most backpacks happen on weekends at peak season on popular trails, using speakers to broadcast your music into an area you are almost certainly sharing with other hikers is a horrible idea.
I do agree that, because most backpacks happen on weekends at peak season on popular trails, using speakers to broadcast your music into an area you are almost certainly sharing with other hikers is a horrible idea.
Re: Portable speakers for the outdoors?
Thanks Aimless 
One thing I learned is that it's never someone else's job to ensure that YOU have the wilderness experience you seek. If you need absolute quiet and solitude... don't go to a popular trail where people play music. Getting mad about it is your own fault Ideally everyone would be completely sensitive to everyone else's desires but what are you going to do.
I did almost always turn my music down or off when I encountered another hiker. Unless I wanted to confuse a JMT hiker by running past them downhill while listening to some Finnish death metal.
I learned something else relevant to this thread: earbuds can make the deep bass sound that they make only because of the physical properties achieved by sealing off the ear canal. Something about the pressure in there makes lower frequency notes sound really loud to our ears. So that's why you can't just turn up a pair of earbuds really loud and hear good bass when you hold them in front of you, and you couldn't make a small portable speaker with great bass w/ simple design tradeoffs.
But the best speaker I've found is the FoxL by Soundmatters. It sounds phenomenal and is quite portable.
One thing I learned is that it's never someone else's job to ensure that YOU have the wilderness experience you seek. If you need absolute quiet and solitude... don't go to a popular trail where people play music. Getting mad about it is your own fault
Ideally everyone would be completely sensitive to everyone else's desires but what are you going to do.I did almost always turn my music down or off when I encountered another hiker. Unless I wanted to confuse a JMT hiker by running past them downhill while listening to some Finnish death metal.
I learned something else relevant to this thread: earbuds can make the deep bass sound that they make only because of the physical properties achieved by sealing off the ear canal. Something about the pressure in there makes lower frequency notes sound really loud to our ears. So that's why you can't just turn up a pair of earbuds really loud and hear good bass when you hold them in front of you, and you couldn't make a small portable speaker with great bass w/ simple design tradeoffs.
But the best speaker I've found is the FoxL by Soundmatters. It sounds phenomenal and is quite portable.