#oneaday Day 61: Audiophile

See, I told you I'd be back later! Even with Patreon being down for half of the day.

Anyway. Yes. In the previous post, I noted that I had acquired a new stereo. I wanted to talk about that a bit today.

I'm not sure exactly what triggered me wanting to have a standalone stereo again — likely a combination of Techmoan, nostalgia and frustration with the fact that when I "upgraded" my car a year or so back, I didn't realise that said "upgrade" would actually remove the CD player I'd become so accustomed to having. That and the knowledge that I have a whole bunch of cool soundtrack CDs from various limited edition games that I don't always remember to rip, and which if I do remember to rip, often get lost in the ever-growing morass of my Google Play Music library.

This, along with various discussions that have happened over the course of the last few years about how music has become a lot more "disposable" in this age of streaming and YouTube, made me have a sudden desire to have a setup in my house where I could just… enjoy music. Preferably not as background noise while I was doing something else, either — somewhere that I could enjoy music just for its own sake.

This is something I used to do when I was younger. I had a stereo in my room, and I used to enjoy playing my CDs and cassettes, much as any teenager at the time did. Sure, sometimes I'd blast something motivational or aggressive while I was swearing at my Maths homework, but at other times I'd simply stick some music on to relax to, to enjoy for its own sake — be it popular things, stuff I'd decided to "take a chance" on (some things never change) or classical music my parents thought that I "should" be listening to as an aspiring musician.

Active listening, as I tend to think of it, is not something I've done very much over the last few years, simply because the way our modern digital music libraries are set up doesn't really encourage that. Why would you listen to a whole album from start to finish when you can pick and choose your favourite tracks, set up playlists and instantly skip the songs you don't like so much?

Well… I decided I kind of missed that. And the result was this.

For those of you who haven't seen this room before, this is my "study" upstairs in my house. It's primarily intended as a room to look at and go "ooh, old shit" in, but everything that is set up there is fully functional, including the computers, the Philips G7000, and the NES. The old Pong clone machine isn't hooked up to anything, but I have no doubt that still works, too.

The latest addition is the big, black, ugly, '90s style boombox monstrosity in the middle. This is, I am told, an "LG LOUDR CM4360 230 W Home Audio System with Bluetooth, CD, Radio Boom Box – Black", and I bought it because it had good reviews and wasn't very expensive. It lacks a DAB tuner and a cassette deck, but I can get DAB radio (or Internet streaming equivalents) piped to it via Bluetooth, and I'm not sure any stereos come with cassette decks any more. I don't actually have any audio tapes here with me, but I do know there's a huge bag of them in the wardrobe of my parents' spare room (which used to be my room) — not coincidentally, this is also where I found the NES, to my great surprise, a few months back.

It's a relatively no-frills system in terms of functionality — no clock, sleep timer, alarm, anything like that, but for what I intend to use it for none of that was necessary. I just needed something that played music, and played it well. And ooh, dear me, does it ever play music well.

My Dad taught me from a young age to always be skeptical about the quoted wattage of audio systems, particularly all-in-one units like this, and as such I question whether this is really a 230W system, but it's most definitely pretty powerful, with a really good bass end on it. This additional power — whether or not it is actually what it says it is — is what convinced me to spend a few extra quid over a cheap Argos thing; those tended to be quoted around 10W, just to put the difference in context.

There's a selection of equaliser presets rather than a full-control equaliser, but I don't really know how to use one of those anyway, so I'm fine with that. Most reviews I read recommended just sticking it on the "Bass" setting and everything sounded great, so I tried that earlier and I can confirm the tracks I tested it with did indeed sound great.

One thing I'm going to be doing as a new challenge for myself in the coming weeks is writing a bit more specifically about soundtracks. I have all these CDs from various limited editions just begging to be listened to a bit more, so I'm keen to investigate them more than I already have done, and find some good ways to write about them, appreciate them and understand them more. Plus it's a good excuse to revisit some favourite tracks — and perhaps give a bit more of a chance to ones I typically skip.

If you're curious, from left to right there, we have the Corpse Party: Blood Drive soundtrack CD "Songs of the Dead"; the Cyberdimension Neptunia: 4 Goddesses Online soundtrack; the Dark Rose Valkyrie soundtrack (man, I really should actually play that sometime soon, I'm super-curious about it); the Drakengard 3 soundtrack (likewise); "Diggin' in the Carts", which is a disc of music from 8- and 16-bit Japanese systems; the GalGun 2 soundtrack (which reminds me, the GalGun: Double Peace soundtrack is lurking somewhere, I should find that); the Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed soundtrack; "Elements of The Last Story", which I actually don't think I've ever listened to, but man that was a good game; the Megadimension Neptunia V-II soundtrack; the Megatagmension Blanc + Neptune vs. Zombies soundtrack; the MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death soundtrack; "Nararock Festival", which is the soundtrack to Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash; "Songs of the Verse Maidens", which is the Omega Quintet soundtrack (hidden gem alert, both in game and music terms); then various Senran Kagura soundtrack sets including Shinovi Versus, Deep Crimson, Bon Appetit, Estival Versus and Burst Re:Newal; the impressive four-disc Song of Memories soundtrack set; the Superdimension Neptune vs Sega Hard Girls soundtrack (a Nep game I should really get around to sometime); the Trillion: God of Destruction soundtrack and, finally the Valkyrie Drive: Bhikkuni soundtrack.

Hey, what can I say, I know what I like.

I'm going to add to this collection over time, perhaps with seeking out some interesting or unusual CDs and building up a small but well-formed collection of favourite game soundtracks. If anyone has any good recommendations (preferably ones that won't break the bank!) I'll happily hear them.

So that's my new stereo. Exciting!