Decibels...

I love music, I do. So much so that I almost always have some on, be it radio or CD. In fact one of the reasons I set up a blog was basically so that I could share with the world details of what I was listening to while I was online. Which is something that I have almost entirely failed to do, thankfully.

My neighbour doesn't like music, he really doesn't. He likes basslines. Okay, so maybe I'm a little snobbish there, it may actually be music; but sat in the house next to him and his large floor standing speakers, any musical qualities it may have are lost.

Of course, my neighbour's musical tastes, or lack thereof, would not be a problem were it not for the fact that not only can I hear it, but I can feel it. It makes my internal organs vibrate, which is not a pleasant feeling. His stereo would be better measured on a seismograph than a decibel meter.

Luckily, he is not in the habit of really pumping the volume up too often, but six o'clock this evening was one of those occasions. As I sat here, moving around the room as my floor and chair bounced around, I decided to do something that I'm normally against, which is retaliation. I have done this a few times before. One of my favourite tricks with the neighbours on the other side of me (who don't have such a bassy system and therefore are just loud rather than nausea inducing) was to get my electric guitar, crank the volume up, get some nice feed back going and make it howl for a while. This usually did the trick, but would not have worked for this evening's problem. This evening, I needed to fight fire with fire...

So out came Metallica's Black Album. Unlistened to for some time in favour of more mellow material, I knocked the dust of the case, took it out, and slapped it in the CD player.

I don't have a particularily spectacular hi-fi system because it is set up for listening to CDs at the fairly low volume and high clarity that suits the music I normally listen to. Nevertheless, once I got the bass up almost to maximuim and the volume up to 8 (my knob goes up to 40, baby!), I found I could no longer hear next door. Up to 10 and my bass was starting to make my internal organs vibrate quite unpleasantly. 12, and even with my wall mounted speakers, I had to be returning the furniture shaking favour to next door.

It took until I reached15 and "Holier Than Thou", and the victory was mine. It's a slightly pyrrhic victory, as my ears now hurt, but nevertheless, I won. And "Sad But True" sounds brilliant at that volume!

------------------------------------------------------------------

Do you read my blog? If so, why not say hello? Drop me an email!