Where and How I Listen

I have two very small office areas: one at home and one that I rent nearby. Neither has a proper stereo system.

The home office has a small modular synth setup next to my desk. For space-management reasons the speakers (monitors, actually, in music-equipment speak) sit perpendicular to my desk, above the synth. There I usually listen to music on my laptop speakers or headphones. My laptop, a MacBook Pro 14″ (the M1, which is somehow several generations behind but feels quite peppy and looks brand new), has fantastic built-in speakers, but when I really want to listen to something, I walk into the living room, which has proper speakers connected to what once was a proper stereo system and now inspires people point and stare and ask what the heck those big things are beneath the television and why don’t I just have a Bluetooth something or other. I have a Plex system running on a Mac Mini attached to the home stereo, so I can easily collate my digital music files (notably: inbound material I’m considering for review), listen to them in the living room, and access them elsewhere with my phone, iPad, or laptop.

The rental office is self-enclosed but in a shared building with an active hallway, so I only listen to music there on headphones and earbuds, so as not to bug anyone. My main extravagance is I bought a second guitar when I got the rental office, so I can be a terrible guitarist in two places rather than just one, and to avoid looking like an oddly clean-cut itinerant musician were I to walk back and forth with the guitar between home and office regularly.

That is where and how I listen.