madcorgi

Today, after too long without even a marginally decent stereo system, I bought a Bose surround sound system because it was on sale at Costco. After making my civil engineer daughter set it up, I pulled out my iPod and started listening to my collection of rock, old and new.

After repeated pleas from my wife to turn it down, I realized several things:

1. I hate background music. It drives me crazy when we go to someone's house and they play music at a "conversational level." Rock should be played either loud enough to make your ears bleed, or not at all.

2. Today's kids, raised listening to iPods with those horrible ear bud headphones, don't realize the crucial role that bass, both as an instrument and as a part of the music spectrum, plays in music. My own daughter, a genius in non-musical ways, asked me what the low rumbling was at the beginning of one song she knows well. She thought there was something wrong with the system. I said, "That's bass."

The exception is dorks in clapped out Hondas, who are so proud of their stereos that they crank them all the way up, long after the subs have been blown out. That's not bass. It's static, and simply a great way to demonstrate their wretched taste to all in the vicinity.

3. When I listen to music, I want people around me to be quiet. Same with when my son and I play. When friends come to my house and ask us to play, they need to shut the hell up.

4. Even a modest system like the one I bought makes a huge difference. Drawing through an iPod, which is a poor source medium, still sounds way better than those putrid systems built into a lot of new houses where the little round speakers are mounted in the ceilings. The wonderful weirdness of Tom Petty's voice is far more apparent. Drums sound like drums, not dinky little computerized machines. Reverb is reverbier. Multiple new dimensions are added.

5. The compression on most modern CD recordings is horrible. Way too much, I guess so it sounds better at low volumes. I wish new albums were offered both with and without it.

I'm not even an audiophile, though I did spend five years in front of Ampeg and Marshall stacks, chasing rock stardom that never happened.