r3fresh

College Tip #1: Noise Reducing Headphones

It being my first year in college, I don’t know what to expect really. I have obviously made the mistake of many by bringing to much stuff, but I did remember to bring one useful device, my noise-reducing, over-the-ear headphones.

The first couple of days at school I hadn’t even touched my Skull Candy headphones. They were sitting in their silk bag waiting for a layer of dust to form, until I started coming home with homework. Now, college homework isn’t too difficult, but when you’ve got a hall full of “crazies” running around with a fake cardboard horse, it can be tough (you want to be running around with that horse too). With the Skull Candy’s, I can put them on and kill most of the outer noise around me and leave me in a sort of peace. Even better, I can plug the Skull Candy’s in and listen to some great sounding music to get rid of the outer noise altogether.

My advice? If you have a roommate or even louder neighbors, consider buying a pair of over-the-ear headphones. They don’t have to be Skull Candy’s or even another expensive brand. Just something that will get rid of some noise, so you can focus on getting work done. I find myself wearing headphones with no music playing, just to get rid of the noise.

Tags: audio, college, headphones, music, tip

Better than iTunes, Better than Amazon, it’s Rhapsody

The experience of moving all of my info from my now old Macbook to my new Macbook Pro was a long and tedious one. Transferring files took more than a day(?) so I decided to do it manually. Moving files manually was pretty easy until I had migrate my iTunes library. After nearly two days of messing around I have come to the conclusion that I will never buy another non-mp3 song from the iTunes store.

The Amazon MP3 music store is a great marketplace for MP3 music, but after looking for specific, obscure, songs I’ve found Amazon doesn’t have many of them. I enjoy Amazon, but compared to the iTunes library it’s pretty lackluster. Looking for Blink-182’s Adam’s song on Amazon left me with the karaoke version, but on Rhapsody, I found in it the matter of seconds.

The Rhapsody MP3 Store is similar to Amazon’s, it offers all of the songs through a website instead of an application like iTunes. As in the name, all of the music in the store is MP3 format, which will work on 99.9% of music devices and applications including the iPod.

Okay, so Rhapsody’s better than iTunes, but why is it better than Amazon? Like I said before, Amazon’s library doesn’t include obsure music like Rhapsody does. Amazon also has the trouble of being more than a music store, unlike Rhapsody which is focused exclusively on music and is much easier to navigate. I find when I use Amazon that my searches can find more than just a song, they’ll find a computer part or a movie with a similar name.

I will still use iTunes and Amazon, but Rhapsody is the first place I will check for music. iTunes DRM-Free is still a work in progress, Amazon doesn’t have everthing I need, all of which Rhapsody has solved. It will be interesting to see in six month’s if I’ve changed my mind or found a better service.

Rhapsody MP3 Music Store

What do you use for music? All of them? None of them? Still a pirate? Leave it in the comments.

Tags: amazon, drm, itunes, library, mp3, music, rhapsody, store

Stuck in My Head: L.B. Rayne

The guys over at Doogtoons have created 80’s singer L.B. Rayne. The Indiana Jones song is not only amazing it’ll be stuck in your head. I don’t like posting videos on my site, but this is exceptional. Showing this video to friends, most think it’s a legit 80’s video. Enjoy!

Tags: artist, doogtoons, l.b rayne, music