Flying with music

It's funny to me how this has changed over the years. When I first saw this discussion on a forum years ago, it was about 90% for not listening to music, only the engines and ATC. Now it seems it's about 90% the other way. In our area, 122.8 is a very congested frequency, so once I'm off the ground and away from any airports, the radio goes off and the music comes on.
 
Years ago it was uncommon to even possess the ability to listen to music. Hell when I started headphones weren't even seen. Long about the mid eighties, I was a pioneer among my area carrying around headset and intercom and not flying with any instructor who wouldn't use them. By the nineties headphones were common (and even required by our club if you were operating in/out of the home base airport of IAD). My first intercom had a music input but I never much use dit. When I put the GDL69 in for weather, I opted for the -A to get the XM Radio (since I listen to that constantly in the car).

Things change. Hell, I don't think I ever used VFR flight following until the mid nineties. These days it's rare I'm not either IFR or on FF.
 
I was shown early on how to use my ADF to pick up AM radio stations and listen to music so I know darn well at least some of the old timers must have...
 
You need a dynamic compression filter on your music app. Problem is, I don't know of any music apps that have this by default. I had this on RockBox which was a rom replacement for Sansa mp3 players back in the day, not sure why nobody is making more advanced options in the current phone apps, they seem to be going the other way and dumbing everything down and removing options. Don't want to confuse the i-users.

It's not a "proper" dynamic compressor, but the "Sound Check" option on iOS attempts to level the music being played, amplitude wise. It's not as aggressive as true dynamic compression though.
 
Sometimes I'll bring a guitar along.
The cirrus does it's thing and I do mine.
 
Just make sure the guitar doesn't pull the red handle !! ;)
 
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