# Relearning to Hear: Part 1: A Journey into Sound
Music is sound; sound is noise; and everything — and nothing — is noise.
The constant hum of the city is a reminder of home to me. Coming from a concrete island, the rumble of motorbikes was almost constant, but it wasn’t always like that. In the 90s, you could get some silence between prayers in the evening, just before the shops opened again to enjoy sound. (I’m learning that) to be in silence is key to appreciating sound. Being in complete silence can be bliss or unbearable.
I’m writing this so I can keep track of what sound means to me. It might get technical because in hopes to learn something and track my journey.
One of the reasons I started writing was because of Linkin Park’s Numb Journals, which I used as a blog until it closed down. Then I moved to Reddit, where I continue to review music and engage with like-minded people to this day. It’s so liberating, being mostly an introvert, to explore a wide array of music and culture through message boards. Reddit works because, unlike social media today, your identity can be just a username and you’re judged on it by karma points rather than clout or followers.
You could make a new account today, drop in your point of view, and if it has substance it will gain traction and open a discourse on relevant subreddits.
Medium is key to appreciating sound
FM → cassettes → CDs → MP3s → lossless → vinyl → back to MP3s
Below is the signal path I’ve found most effective for the best quality when streaming (Most TL:DR version I could write, I'll rewrite this part in a more objective view in the next part):
Apple Music (ALAC Lossless / Hi-Res Lossless)
│
▼
──────────────────────────────
A) Bluetooth Headphones (AirPods, Beats)
──────────────────────────────
ALAC → AAC compression (~256 kbps) → Bluetooth transmission → Headphone DAC → Speakers
❌ Lossless broken at Bluetooth stage
❌ Not Hi-Res (limited by AAC + Bluetooth bandwidth)
✔ Still very good quality, but lossy
──────────────────────────────
B) AirPods Max Wired (Lightning-to-3.5mm Cable)
──────────────────────────────
ALAC → iPhone DAC → Analog → Cable → AirPods Max ADC → Digital → AirPods Max DAC → Speakers
⚠ Multiple conversions → Not pure lossless
✔ Better than Bluetooth, but not perfect Hi-Res
──────────────────────────────
C) Wired Headphones via External DAC (Lightning/USB-C)
──────────────────────────────
ALAC → Digital (USB) → External DAC (supports up to 24-bit/192 kHz) → Headphones/Speakers
✅ True Lossless
✅ Hi-Res possible if DAC + headphones support it
──────────────────────────────
D) Mac + USB DAC + Headphones/Speakers
──────────────────────────────
ALAC → Digital (USB) → External DAC → Headphones/Speakers
✅ True Lossless
✅ Hi-Res possible (up to 192 kHz depending on DAC)
For most, the DAC on any phone (especially iPhones) should suffice
For most, the DAC on any phone (especially iPhones) should suffice, because most producers have mastered their music to sound quite acceptable on the cheapest of headphones and speakers.
I don’t consider myself an audiophile, but I do appreciate the nuances you hear when listening to uncompressed music.
Today, I reserve this for special occasions. I used to carry IEMs in my 20s and exclusively listen to uncompressed music.
Hearing this track (Age of the 5th Sun — God Is an Astronaut) first on a 320kbps MP3 through Shure215s, compared to hearing it lossless, really clicked for me. Today, hearing it on streaming, I can’t tell the difference anymore.
My CD collection in 2007 & my father's mixer, which I used with my aunt's iPod and mine to play music at family events or just listening sessions at home until he sold them off >:( — He promised a modern mixer, believing they were a suitable goal after my high school graduation.
Preservation
To keep track of what I listen to and to curate different genres, I’ve been mixtaping and sampling since Windows XP times. Curating playlists daily at my PC in the early 2000s is a core memory.
Chopping up parts of songs on Audacity and assigning them to boot-up sound effects was my first dive into sampling.
I had about 60GB worth of music that started at 20GB when I ripped my CDs at that time. I found music on forums and through people on those message boards — it’s where similar minds exchanged music then. Before that, I hoarded hand-me-down libraries from my family, which still reside on my archive hard drives.
Mediums and platforms keep changing. I still curate on streaming platforms and onto mixtapes using Traktor (DJ software). My collection is limited due to space constraints. All of my CDs are in storage, and I’m carrying a growing vinyl collection because some records are meant to be heard as a whole — it’s a ritual for my well-being.
Owning artists’ work is the only way to preserve and support music. I’ve been hoarding all my life to try to archive it. More than that, it has been therapy. Spending time crate digging is like Christmas for me, and I never take it for granted.
Curating playlists on iTunes on 2007 is the earliest screenshot I have, rest are in xml files on my hard drives. Today I upload to https://audius.co/2_1/wndraln (first mixtape I posted on 8tracks (now a dead website, then i continued to upload to Soundcloud.com & Mixcloud until I found this open sourced kinda website for musicians, in hopes it wont get monetised because its built on web3 https://blog.audius.co/article/what-is-audius, this deserve an in-depth post after I've more analytics!
Silence is LOUD
Today, I yearn for silence or music with little to no lyrics that resonate with me. This blog post captures what I mean almost entirely:
https://jennanewbery.com/silence-isnt-the-absence-of-sound-its-the-most-profound-sound-of-all/
The Absence in vocals opened doors for me. Post-rock, discovered in 2005, told stories without words.
The first artist I discovered was God Is an Astronaut; the most recent was The World Ends with You, a Gen Z band I found on r/shoegaze playing in what looked like a house in Shah Alam, Malaysia.
I witnessed my first post-rock show, and it was the loudest I’ve been to. As contradictory as that sounds, I was engulfed. It’s a sound I’ve been following that deserves a post of its own.
Second time I saw World Ends With You, a shoegaze/nugaze up-and-coming band from Malaysia whom I'm following
Notable Milestones in My Journey into Sound
90-97 - Parents & Extended Family's music collection would be the base of my music collection.
Late 90s-2009 I collected CDs actively until the only record store in my home country closed down. It was only then I resorted to pirating. Yearned to experience music live but rarely got to because where I'm from is not on the radar of any genre of international music I listened to.
2001 - I got MTV Music Generator for my playstation one as a birthday gift from some family members and I started producing for fun. I didn't know how to use FL Studio which my Uncles had much fun on. I resorted to Audacity and mix-taping more
2007-2011 - I discovered dubstep and started loving the low ends of electronic music, and I started producing just for fun. Influenced by Mary Anne Hobbes’s BBC Radio show, which shaped my taste in electronic music.
2011-today - I met friends who played music and started jamming with them
2019 - I was introduced to Solfeggio Frequencies while getting a ride from a really kind Aunt like figure for me who shared me lossless files after I requested. Today, those frequencies lead my music library leaderboard (last.fm statistics where I track my music) Usually it takes years for new artists to come up to my top 10 leaderboard because I’ve tracked 12k+ artists on this website since 2005)
2017-today Experience music live, crate digging in record shops in South East Asia
Last.Fm stats that show when I listen to music 2006-2019
My All-Time Last.fm Top 8 as of August 2025
Synthesising Sound
Wherever I go in the world, the sounds of people and cities feel like home. Burial inspired me to capture sounds around me. Just like photos, they are memories.
I blend them into my mixtapes so they tell a story. Covers of songs, snippets of voice messages, sounds of metro announcements, and even my cab driver's chatter all become part of the narrative.
One reason for making this blog is to bring them all together in one place — somewhere I have control. Currently, this makes sense primarily to me, and writing it down helps me progress to the next phase.
My next chapter in relearning how to hear will be about synthesising and making sound. TL:DR Jamming with friends, in my home country till 2015, Moving from home until now and how that's changed my perception of listening, producing and collecting music. I've learned a lot from the people I surround myself with, I'm really excited to compile and share these stories.
Thank you for reading if you come this far.