I’ve been thinking about how I listen to music lately. Back around xmas, Ben and I were ripping around the city in his BMW, blasting black metal while we mowed down school children and little old ladies with reckless abandon. It was great, largely due to the amazing sound quality of the stereo in that vehicle. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it wasn’t just the best car stereo I’ve ever heard, it was one of the best stereos I’ve ever heard, period. Albums that had sounded bad on every other stereo sounded great in his car. If I was Ben, I would be finding reasons to drive around more and listen to music on that amazing system.
That got me thinking about all the good reasons for listening to music in a car. It’s often just you in your car, so you can listen to whatever you want, as loud as you want. I value that. And it’s a small environment so it’s easier to control elements that affect sound and make it sound great. And long drives are conducive to listening to full albums, which is something the whole world has unfortunately gotten away from — great albums are a real journey from start to finish, and when we only listen to a single or a few songs from one, we’re depriving ourselves of the journey, of the bigger experience of the full record.
I have a decent old stereo system in my house but depending on where I am in the house, or especially in the room (like if I’m close to the sub and further from the speakers), the overall sound can get weird. And I can’t listen to music on our home stereo often because I share this space with Jenn most of the time and she doesn’t want to listen to Jupiterian AGAIN. So that’s it, I’m committing to replacing the stereo in my car now. The current one in there is glitchy and goes through phases where it repeatedly pauses the music for several seconds at a time, which obviously takes a massive shit all over any kind of listening experience. My car will never be on par with Ben’s BMW but it should at least sound ok and not randomly pause songs every 20 seconds, because otherwise I have almost zero chance for sublime listening experiences on any of my upcoming long drives down island.
crimson highway 