I’ve had this little piece of equipment for three years now, no almost four. Back when I started as an IT consultant I had to drive to Beerse (near Antwerp) every day. In the beginning I took Cd’s along but, that started to bore me pretty quickly. I had owned an Ipod for a few months and was looking for a way to listen to my Ipod in the car, without having to use the headphones. After discovering podcasts, my Ipod became the center of my entertainment and the need for "pod-content" in the cabin rose even more. I had heard about the Logitech MM50, A portable little boombox that held your Ipod and gave pretty good sound. It ran on a 12 volt power adapter and also had an internal backup battery, so you could take it with you outside. 12 volts is the same voltage as a car battery so my father in law and I removed the power adapter and hooked up one of the cigaret lighter plugs. And what do you know, the thing worked like a charm. For 2 years the MM50 went everywhere, from Hasselt to Antwerp to Mechelen .. Everywhere the little bugger was playing my podcasts. A few months ago it started to malfunction , the little delicate power plug inside was starting to come loose. It wasn’t that bad because by that time I had gotten my new company car that had a line-in jack and did not need the MM50 that much anymore.
But Wednesday night we took out the welding bolt and put humpty dumpty back together again. Taking of the little powerjack we soldered the powercables straight onto the mainboard and the MM50 is purring (on net power) again. So far I have parked it in the kitchen where Nyana and I plop in our Ipods whenever we need to to either charge them or listen to music. So far I have found the experience of listening to podcasts while doing the dishes WITHOUT using either a pc or headphones to be very pleasant. The MM50 has a much warmer sound and strangely enough its like all the podcasters you are listening to are much ‘closer’ to you. It makes it all sound much more "professional". And with that the classic media has taken another step back here at the Knights castle. And if its up to Nyana, after the move we shall be going even one step further. A friend of ours showed us the B&W Zeppelin. Both the sound (and the price) of this system put the MM50 to shame, but it is an AWESOME peace of kit. Hearing it in a demo the sound blew us away. And the idea surfaced : If we have this we don’t even need a stereo anymore. No 5,1 surround sound hassle, no stupid little stereo deck on the kitchen counter .. just this thing. Insert Ipod (or external sound source) and you are good to go. It was one of the first "serious" ipod-speakers I saw out there and looking at the design , its just fracking ALIEN. So I wonder if the Zeppelin will find a new port once the move to our new house is complete. What I do know is that once we are there, analogue content will take another step into the realm of oblivion.