# How long ago could the average person have started a digital music library? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 4, 2018, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970 "2018-11-04T15:09:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2018, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/101 "2018-11-12T21:34:39Z")
People underestimate the fun sounds that a classic PC speaker could produce. There were 3 settable counters for timing so you could produce some fairly complex “wave forms”. You could lower the volume of a tone by making the pulse width short. One timer could be used to modulate the sound produced by another. All sorts of neat tricks. You were practically in PCM territory. I played back Simpsons audio samples, simple music (Ode to Joy is always popular), and there even was a basic speech synthesizer. You typed in the phonetic sounds and out came speech! Amazing. One fun little one was Squawk from 1987. Hit a key, get one of many weird sounds. You can still [download](http://www.uselesssoftware.com/download/squawk-zip) and run it, but unfortunately a modern OS will divert the “sound” to standard audio out, and do a terrible job at it. The Wikipedia [article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_speaker) has more plus a recording of a little Bach music. (I tracked down Squawk on my computer in a folder of old games. There goes the rest of the afternoon. :)) ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2018, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/102 "2018-11-12T22:34:35Z")
Around the time I first got online in 1996, I remember downloading Oasis b-sides, 200 or 300k files with shockingly bad audio quality. Sounded like they were being played through a fish tank. A year or so later I was ripping friends’ and family cds and forming a decent enough collection, then MP3 became really big a year or so after that, Napster etc. I had piles of CD-rs with MP3s on them at one stage. I believe I still have a number of audio files that I can listen to on my bog standard laptop now that date from 1998/99. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2018, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/103 "2018-11-13T00:48:44Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > I suspect around that time (1993-1994, maybe?) there had to be somebody somewhere who could put music onto their computer and listen to it over the computer speakers or headphones. Sure they needed a high powered computer and a big hard drive, maybe a fancy sound card. But businesses and colleges had those things, and I imagine rich computer nerds did too. Can we put a name to one of them? The first person I personally knew, who was curating a music collection, was in 2000. She was using our 128K ISDN connection, and saving to our server 🙂 That was a thing too. Sys Admin blocked Napster, because the additional data costs were killing us. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2018, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970/104 "2018-11-13T00:50:21Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > One fun little one was Squawk from 1987. Hit a key, get one of many weird sounds. 🙂 Do you remember “drain” 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-ago-could-the-average-person-have-started-a-digital-music-library/823970.md?page=5)