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i'm with the band (part 1)

Pairing: Bob Floyd x Female!Reader & Bradley Bradshaw x Female!Reader (final pairing to be revealed at the end...) Word count: 7.6k CW: Use of Y/N; reader wears Dr Martens, but that's the only specific detail.

You discover that your best friend Bob can play the drums, and since you have some musical gifts of your own, you decide to start a navy band. It's supposed to be a bit of harmless fun, but what happens when lines get blurred between you and Bob, feelings come to the surface, and a certain Rooster gets jealous?

This is a multi-part fic. Part two Part three

‘If I’d known you could play the drums like that,’ you said, looping your arm through Bob’s. ‘I’d have suggested starting a band months ago!’ 

As the two of you walked across the near-empty runway, you mourned all the time you’d wasted already and wondered how soon you could get a move on with your idea. Bob was smiling shyly, eyes fixed firmly on the tarmac. You knew he didn’t think he drummed well enough to be in a band. You also knew he had a habit of being too hard on himself. 

It was pure chance that had led you to discover Bob’s affinity for music. You’d been standing outside the front door of his house with a box of doughnuts in your hand, ready to surprise your friend, when you’d frozen. 

Somebody was drumming—drumming well.

 It sounded perfect, not just messy noise and missed beats, and it was coming from Bob’s small garage. Resolutely, you’d hurried back down the stairs that led up to the red front door and crept across the well-kept lawn. Once you’d safely hidden behind a fern closer to the garage, you’d realised that a backing track was playing over a speaker, which Bob was drumming to. It was a Catfish and the Bottlemen song—one of his favourite bands. Even now—days later—you still weren’t over it; how your heartbeat had fallen in time with Bob’s drumming and how alive it had made you feel. 

And then there was the small matter of how good he’d looked doing it. 

Bob Floyd had been your closest friend in San Diego since you were first called back to TOPGUN many moons ago. Both of you were Weapons Systems Officers; this similarity was the gravitational force that had pulled you together, but how much you had in common kept you that way. With this being said, you were having a hard time justifying your body’s reaction when you peeked around the fern and into the garage that day. He was wearing a white t-shirt, the front of which was soaked with sweat, his hair was uncharacteristically mussed, and he wasn’t wearing his glasses. 

Eventually, you’d decided to announce yourself, but not before heavily debating whether or not you should just take yourself home and have a cold shower. In the days since, your brain had habitually dredged your unholy thoughts up from the dark corner you’d haphazardly shoved them into. The veins in his hands and forearms, the way his biceps moved when he hit the drums, the furrow of his sweat-slicked brow, his messy hair… It was too much. 

The two of you were nearing the changing rooms, where you’d go separate ways to shower and change. You knew if you let the idea of starting a band drop again, that would be it. Bob would have to give in eventually, so long as you were persistent. 

‘You’re so talented, Bobby.’ You said. ‘I can play guitar, and I’m an alright singer. We’d only need to find a bass player and a lead guitarist.’ 

Bob scoffed. ‘You’re more than alright, Y/CS. Now who’s the one putting themselves down?’

Your face heated up, and for once, you were glad that Bob struggled to maintain eye contact. 

‘Well, thank you.’ You murmured.

Momentarily disarmed, you walked a few paces in companionable silence. Surprisingly, Bob was the one to break it. 

‘I’m not saying no,’ he told you. ‘I’m just not thrilled at the idea of people hearing me play. I didn’t even tell you that I could.’

‘And that’s saying something,’ you grumbled. ‘Okay, let’s shelve it for now. What do you say we go out for drinks tonight, and we can brainstorm.’

Luckily, Bob wasn’t in the habit of saying no to his best friend. 

He probably couldn’t even if he wanted to. 

Summer was winding down, and although it was never freezing in San Diego, the evenings were beginning to get chillier. As you approached The Hard Deck and saw Bob sitting outside waiting, you were glad you’d decided to wear a jacket. 

He sat with his back to the bar, looking out over the sand and the ocean beyond it. The fiery sunset made it seem like the beach was doused with honey, and you were momentarily reminded why you loved your station so much. You didn’t want to startle Bob, who was—let’s face it—easily startled, so you walked around the car park and up the decking instead of going up behind him. He watched you close the short distance from the edge of the seating area to the table with an easy smile on his face. 

That’s how it always was with you and Bob. Easy. 

‘I was beginning to think I’d been stood up.’ He said as you took the seat opposite him.

‘Sorry. I was gonna drive, but then I decided it was too nice, and I didn’t know if we’d drink much.’

‘I never drink much.’

You reached over and ruffled his perfect hair. ‘I know, Bobby, but there’s a first time for everything.’

A Peroni was already waiting for you, and Bob was nursing an ice-cold Corona Light. He probably wouldn’t drink more than two tonight since it was a work night. Then again, he remained his sensible self on the weekends too. Jake and Bradley had tried countless times to get him to ‘let loose,’ and you’d backed Bob up every single time, telling them firmly that not everybody needed to get shit-faced to have a good time. Jake usually responded with some variation of ‘you don’t need a car to get places either, darlin’, but it sure helps.’ 

You took a sip of your pint, glad to find it had a dash of lime. Bob never forgot anything, least of all your drink order. 

‘So,’ you grinned devilishly. ‘The band.’

The corner of his lips twitched as he fought a smile. ‘There is no band.’

‘There is no band yet. I plan on changing that. I think we should make a poster to put up around base. There’s a notice board in the female changing rooms, so I’m assuming there’s one in yours, too. We could also put a few up in the barracks.’ 

Even though Bob seemingly didn’t want to start this band, he suggested asking Penny’s permission to put some in both bathrooms in The Hard Deck as well. 

‘While we’re at it, we could put a few up around town,’ you added. ‘Unless we want this to be a navy-only band.’  

Bob pushed his glasses up his nose and sipped his beer. You knew him well, including all his mannerisms and facial expressions. He was antsy and had the look he always had when Jake or Javy tried to extort personal information from him, like if he’d slept with anyone lately. 

‘There’s something you don’t wanna tell me.’ You stated. 

‘No, there isn’t.’ He tried to insist, but his heart wasn’t in it.

‘Look, Bobby. We don’t have to do this if it makes you uncomfortable. I’ll drop it now and never speak of it again.’ For whatever reason, you found yourself reaching out and taking his hand. It was cold from gripping his beer bottle. ‘But before you say yes to that with what I’m sure will be a massive amount of relief, I want you to know that you’re mega-talented. It’s not just a case of me thinking it—it’s an undeniable fact. If we find some decent bandmates and give this our all, we could have a lot of fun.’ 

Bob’s eyes were boring holes into the wooden picnic table. ‘I know we’d have fun, but would we have to play in front of people?’

‘If you really didn’t want to, we wouldn’t. But we’ve gotta find two more members and see if we can all work together before we even start thinking about that kind of thing.’ You squeezed his hand reassuringly. ‘It’s just a bit of harmless fun. What do you say?’

He met your eyes and smiled sheepishly. ‘Okay, fine.’

‘Yay!’ You shouted, practically jumping out of your seat to run around and hug him. 

You wrapped your arms around his neck from behind and leaned down so your face was next to his. After the initial shock had worn off, he reached up and put his hands over your forearms. It was the most awkward hug ever, but it was the best the two of you could do at such short notice. 

‘I’ll start working on the posters tomorrow when I get home.’ 

Bradley knew that you and Bob were close, and he understood why. You were both WSOs, both loved music, and you were both quiet. When the group was overly drunk or rowdy, or the conversation ended up in territories neither of you was comfortable with, you retreated into your own private world. Bradley had seen it happen more than enough times: the way you eased each other’s anxiety just by sitting close together, the knowing looks you shared when one of the daggers did something predictable, the inside jokes and references you made that left everyone else feeling like they were on the outside of something.

It was hard to ignore.

Bradley wasn’t as unruly as Mickey or as daring as Jake and Javy. He wasn’t as stern and fierce as Natasha and didn’t ramble about sports when drunk like Reuben. But he wasn’t a wallflower like you or Bob, either. He was something else entirely. 

Bradley prided himself on his ability to fit in anywhere. He could talk to almost anyone about anything, but still, he felt something was missing. He didn’t have one specific person he thought he was in tandem with. At first, he liked it. When he was young, he thought it meant he was just a social butterfly, able to jump from group to group and fit into them all. As he got older, he felt out of step, like one of his legs was longer than the other.

He wanted to find his person. The one he could sit with at the bar and judge everyone else with. The one he could communicate with through a single facial expression or private joke—whose mere presence would comfort him. 

Bradley was sitting inside with the rest of the daggers. They were only having a quiet few, then heading home. Natasha was thrashing Mickey at pool, and Jake was attempting to show Javy how he managed to get a bullseye almost every time in darts. Bradley and Reuben sat at a high table nearby, chatting about this and that. They were next to the window that looked out across the outdoor seating area, and Bradley had been glancing at you and Bob all evening. At first, he’d been waiting for you to wrap things up and come and join in. Then, when you came in to get another drink before heading back outside, he wondered if something had happened. Maybe it was something you didn’t want to talk to the rest of the daggers about. He watched as closely as he could without making it evident to the rest of his friends. Natasha was already convinced he had a thing for you—he didn’t feel like adding fuel to that particular fire today, thank you very much. 

Judging by the way you were talking exciting with your hands, he knew the two of you weren’t talking about something bad. Then, he saw you run around the table and hug Bob, and he wondered if he’d gotten this totally wrong. The whole group, aside from him and Natasha, were convinced that you and Bob were more than best friends. Jake and Javy teased you incessantly, and he was pretty sure that Mickey had started the bet on base as to how long it would take for the two of you to admit your feelings for one another. Bradley had ten bucks on this never happening because he was very close with Nat who was very close with you, and you always reassured her that you and Bob weren’t a thing. Bradley wasn’t a girl, but he understood that if you were lying, Natasha would know. Girlfriends always know when their girlfriends are lying, especially regarding guys. 

So Bradley was confused. He’d never seen you and Bob hug before, and you’d never spent a whole evening separate from the group, knowing said group was ten feet away. Something was going on, and Bradley was desperate to know what. Part of him wanted to take this to Natasha for a second opinion, but she would only accuse him of jealousy. 

Maybe he was jealous, but he didn’t need his best friend telling him that. How could he not be jealous when you looked, walked, and talked like that? When were you so intelligent, caring, and mindful of other people’s feelings? When you sang with him at the piano some nights, music coursing through your veins the same way it coursed through his?

Bradley had always known that you and Bob were close. He understood why. But just because he understood why didn’t mean he had to be okay with it. 

Bob was working out in the gym on base when you cornered him the next day. It had been a slow morning and an even slower afternoon, which was welcomed after almost a fortnight of incessant training courses. He was lifting weights with his headphones on when he felt a presence at the bottom of the bench. He finished his reps, lifted the barbell back onto its stand and sat up. You were standing with a stack of papers in your hands and a face that meant business, and you were saying something Bob couldn’t hear. He removed his headphones, just about catching the back end of your sentence.

‘—so all you need to do is put one in the guy’s changing rooms and stalls. Mav is taking some to Penny’s tonight.’ 

This was all happening very fast.

‘I thought you were making posters tonight after work.’ He said, scratching the back of his head.

‘I was, but I couldn’t sleep when I got home ‘cause I was too excited.’ 

It pleased Bob to see you so joyful and filled with passion. There was nothing he loved more. But he couldn’t help but feel strange about the whole band thing. You were never supposed to find out that he could drum, mainly because he didn’t think he was that great at it. He was embarrassed that you’d seen him so unfiltered, and in a way, it made him feel vulnerable. The prospect of other people seeing him in the same way made him more than a little nervous. On a daily basis, he blended into the background. The only person he stood out to most of the time was you; he liked it that way. He didn’t want to stand out to anyone else; he didn’t want anyone’s eyes on him. 

But he had to admit that making music with you did seem appealing. The two things he loved most in the world come together as one. If the band ended up being as good as you wanted it to be and you managed to score some gigs, he would find a way to be okay with it. 

Anything to keep that smile on your face. 

‘You wanna come over later?’ Bob asked. ‘We could order dinner, maybe try out a few songs. I haven’t heard you sing in a while, and you’ve never played your guitar for me.’ 

You flushed scarlet, and Bob wondered if you were just as shy when playing for people as he was. You hid it better than he did, like everything else. 

‘That’d be nice. We can start thinking about a setlist.’

‘I think we need to find some bandmates before we make a setlist.’

‘It doesn’t hurt to have some ideas for when we finally meet aforementioned bandmates,’ you said optimistically. ‘I think they’ll find our eagerness enticing.’

Bob couldn’t help but laugh. ‘You’re perfect, you know that?’

He wasn’t wearing his glasses, so it was somehow easier to keep eye contact. Like being half-blind made him more confident. He supposed if he couldn’t see your reactions clearly, he wouldn’t have to worry about what he said as much. 

‘Well, so are you.’ You replied timidly. 

‘My place at seven?’

‘It’s a date.’

Bob was only half blind, not totally. He saw your whole demeanour change when you realised what you’d said.

‘N-not a date,’ you stammered. ‘That’s not what I meant.’

He smiled. ‘It’s okay, I know what you meant.’

‘Okay,’ you breathed. ‘Your place at seven.’

Your cheeks were flushed with embarrassment, and you looked everywhere but at him, but he thought you were adorable. 

By seven-thirty, you were scarfing egg rolls at your best friend’s place. It was his turn to pick the takeout, and he’d chosen Chinese. Your laptop was on your knee, and you were going through your ‘Songs That Would Wake Me From a Coma’ playlist, explaining to Bob what you loved about each one. He had a similar playlist, and whenever you played something that was also on his, the smile on his face got larger. He’d been smiling at you all day, and you could scarcely believe he’d been on the fence about starting a band together. He didn’t seem nervous now, and the two of you had fallen into your usual, easy rhythm. 

After dinner, Bob helped you get your guitar and amp from your car. You had a black Fender Dreadnought for playing acoustic, but since you’d be playing electric in the band, you brought your Gretsch. It was the same guitar Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy played, and it was your pride and joy. 

Bob’s garage was perfect for band rehearsals. He left his car on the drive and used the garage as his music room since his house was relatively small. This was how he’d managed to hide his talent from you for so long. What reason would you have to go in his garage? 

It was soundproofed since drumming was hands down the nosiest hobby a person could have, and he’d outfitted the place with creature comforts: a mini fridge for sodas and snacks, a small leather couch with blankets and pillows, framed band posters on the walls, a tasteful rug, and, of course, his drum kit. You’d never played, but it didn’t take a genius to know that it must have cost a pretty penny. You could tell that Bob took good care of it, too.

‘Bobby, this is going to be perfect. We’ll be able to practise here.’ 

‘We’ll probably have to get some more kit. Mics, some more amps. Pedals.’

‘Any guitarist worth their salt will already have that kinda stuff. I have tonnes of shit in my lockup. Haven’t got a mic or a stand, though.’

‘We can cross that bridge when we come to it.’

‘We’ve been saying that a lot lately,’ you grinned. ‘There’s a lot of bridges in our future.’

You got comfy on the couch, and Bob perched himself on the stool behind his drum kit. He watched as you expertly tuned your guitar, fingers moving over the pegs with the kind of surety that only came with doing something a million times. 

‘What shall I play?’ You asked.

‘Play me your go-to when you’re just playing for yourself.’

Since you always played for yourself, you had no shortage of options. But you settled on your favourite: the solo from Wrong Side of Heaven by Five Finger Death Punch. It was short but tricky and had taken you months to perfect. Maybe you were showing off, but you were proud that you could play it, and you’d be damned if Bob’s shocked expression wasn’t worth it. 

When you were finished, he stood up and gave you a round of applause. You had no idea what to feel. Embarrassment or pride? A mixture of both? 

‘Damn,’ Bob breathed. ‘That was insane. You’re a total rockstar, Y/CS.’ 

‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ you chuckled. ‘But thank you. It took me so long to learn how to play that.’ ‘That’s like me and Psychosocial.’

You raised a brow. ‘Slipknot?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I didn’t take you for a Slipknot kinda guy, Bobby.’

‘I listen to a few of their songs,’ he explained. ‘But it’s more that they’re really fun to play.’

You gestured to his drum kit. ‘Well, go on then.’

‘No way,’ Bob shook his head. ‘I’ll screw it up in front of you.’

‘Please?’ You pouted. 

So you spent the next few hours taking turns playing parts of songs you knew, bonding over your shared favourites and introducing one another to new music. You were going to stop for the night, but then you discovered that Bob knew how to play some of the same songs as you, and you started playing together. 

You were the one who suggested starting a navy band—you knew it would be entertaining—but playing with Bob like this… There were no words to describe how incredible it felt. 

It was Reuben’s idea to go out for dinner that Saturday night, but now that day had finally arrived, Bradley regretted saying yes. It had been pouring rain all day, putting a pin in his plans to swim at the beach. Then, his dryer—which was second-hand and had always been temperamental at best—had finally packed up, with his soaking wet uniform for Monday still inside. The last thing he wanted to do was get himself ready and drive halfway across town to Little Italy, but every excuse he typed out to the group chat sounded meagre and childish. He ended up deleting them and getting himself in the shower, hoping that going out with his closest friends would lift his mood, even though he couldn’t be bothered to leave his house. 

Autumn was quickly closing in, and Bradley was glad he had a reason to wear his favourite jacket again— a vintage, fleece-lined Levi number covered in patches that had belonged to his dad. He took it from his wardrobe and laid it on his bed, along with a pair of black jeans, a Smiths t-shirt and his Chelsea boots. The day he’d bought—or rather, been forced to buy—those boots was still fresh in his memory. It wasn’t long after you’d all been called back to TOPGUN for the special detachment. In fact, it was only a few days after the daggers had received the news that they’d be staying in San Diego permanently. It was a day not unlike this one, and he’d been at the mall looking for a suit to wear to a wedding he was flying home for. He rounded a corner on his way to Starbucks into a head-on collision with you. He hadn’t known you long, only since that first night in The Hard Deck when everyone either reunited with old friends or made new ones. 

‘I’m so, so sorry,’ you gasped. ‘What an idiot, I’m so clumsy.’

Your shopping bags had fallen to the floor, and you were scrambling to pick them up, not having realised who you’d just bumped into. Bradley was so caught up admiring you in your long-sleeve dress and boots that he forgot his manners. He’d never seen you out of uniform and suddenly felt very cheated. 

You were gorgeous. 

‘No, it’s my fault,’ he insisted, crouching down to help you gather your things. ‘Sorry, Y/CS.’

Your head snapped up, and you met his gaze, a shy smile taking hold of your delicate features. ‘Rooster,’ you breathed. ‘How didn’t I know that was you?’

The two of you stood up at the same time, almost bumping heads. ‘Beats me,’ he chuckled. I’m big enough to see.’ 

Your laugh was a little more on the awkward side, and he briefly wondered if you’d missed his sarcasm. 

‘Lieutenant Bradley Bradshaw,’ you’d said toyingly. ‘Callsign: Beanpole.’

Until now, Bradley hadn’t thought you capable of a jibe like that. You were quiet at work, only speaking when necessary, as though you believed that if you didn’t have anything to add to the conversation, it wasn’t worth speaking at all. The most he’d seen you speak was with Bob about work, and with Coyote, since you were his backseater. 

He was sure his laughter echoed through the entire shopping centre. 

‘You shopping for anything in particular?’ He asked, desperate to keep the conversation going and that smile on your pretty face. 

‘New boots,’ you replied. ‘Dr Martens have brought out their new Fall collection.’

Bradley glanced at the boots you were wearing and realised he’d just learned a little something about Lieutenant Y/N Y/L/N. ‘I just bought a new suit,’ he told you. ‘I could use a nice new pair of shoes to go with it if you’d like some company.’

‘Well, sure. I don’t see why not.’ You blinked, taken aback.

Bradley couldn’t understand why you were surprised that he wanted to spend time with you. Before heading to the Dr Martens store, the two of you stopped at Starbucks. He explained that he was initially heading there before he so rudely knocked into you and asked if he could buy you a coffee by way of apology. You’d told him he didn’t need to apologise but accepted the coffee anyway. 

‘I’ll have an iced white mocha, please. If you’re sure.’ you told him politely. 

‘An iced white mocha,’ he echoed. ‘Sounds fancy.’

‘What do you normally order?’

‘Usually just a flat white.’ The disgust on your face as you glared up at him had him laughing all over again. ‘What’s that face for?’

‘You don’t go to Starbucks and order a flat white!’ You exclaimed. ‘That’s like going to a strip club and chatting up the security guard.’ 

Bradley guffawed. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed this much. And he couldn’t believe that your quiet and composed self was the cause of it. 

‘What should I get instead, then?’ He asked. ‘Since you’re such an expert.’ 

‘Do you like iced drinks?’

‘Of course.’

You thought for a moment. ‘What about caramel?’

‘Yup.’

‘Then you should try an iced caramel macchiato.’

Nobody had been waiting behind you when you came into the store. Now, four people were waiting behind you and Bradley. The server had been trying to get your attention for a while, and someone tsked impatiently. 

‘An iced white mocha for Y/CS here, and I’ll take an iced caramel mach- machi… whatever she just said.’

‘Macchiato,’ you corrected. ‘It’s macchiato.’

Bradley gently nudged you with his elbow. ‘It’s leviOsa, not leviosA.’ 

It was your turn to nearly pee your pants from laughing. 

‘Can I get a name, please?’ The server asked frustratedly. 

‘Beanpole.’ Bradley smirked. 

You were still giggling like a couple of school kids when you got to the Dr Martens store. You already knew which boots you wanted, so you only had to ask the shop assistant to fetch your size. While you waited, you browsed the men’s section with Bradley, pointing out styles you thought might suit him. 

‘Wait!’ You exclaimed. ‘I know exactly which pair would look the best on you.’

Your excitement enamoured him; he probably would have bought anything you handed him to make you happy. It was a stroke of luck that the shoe you gave him was decent, something he probably would have picked for himself: a pair of black Chelsea boots, subtle but sexy with their thick soles and shiny leather. He’d never imagined himself in a pair of docs before, but he could undoubtedly imagine himself in these. When the clerk returned with your shoes, he asked if she wouldn’t mind fetching a size 12 of the ‘edgy-looking Chelsea boots.’ She’d smiled at his description, and so had you. 

‘Let’s just hope I can pull them off as well as you.’

You flushed, batting your eyelashes at him. If it were anyone else, he’d have thought you were being demure on purpose, just to be cute. But it wasn’t anyone else; it was you, and you were cute. 

He wondered if you’d notice that he was wearing them today. Usually, you pointed them out when he did, and he liked it when you singled him out from everyone else and called him Beanpole, leaving everyone else slightly confused. Even Bob wasn’t in on that joke. 

Once he was dressed and ready, he headed out to the Bronco. He had to run to avoid getting drenched, and he once again questioned his decision as he pulled off his driveway. Then he thought about you and realised he didn’t have music playing. For the duration of his journey, he sang along to old Bon Jovi songs, grinning like a fool at the thought of seeing you. 

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all. 

It was only natural that you and Bob had travelled to the restaurant together since your house was on the way. Bob had an umbrella in the back of his pickup, so he went to your front door instead of texting to let you know he’d arrived. You received him in the most exquisite dress he’d ever seen, made even more jaw-dropping by the fact it was you wearing it. It was a deep navy, with a cowl neck and a ruffled hem. The top material layer was peppered with tiny crystals that gave the illusion of a beautiful starry night. Your hair fell in loose curls down your back, the top half pinned up with little star-shaped clips. As for your makeup… well, that was another story entirely. You’d worn more than usual, but you’d been careful not to make it seem overdone. 

Bob was speechless. Objectively, he’d always known you were a gorgeous woman but seeing you all dolled up like that had him pulling at the collar of his shirt, hoping to loosen it a little. 

‘Bobby. You look handsome.’

Since the restaurant Reuben had picked was fancy, Bob had opted for black suit pants, a white button-down, and a collared leather jacket. Standing next to you, he felt he must look overwhelmingly disappointing. 

‘And you look like a movie star. I should’ve laid a red carpet.’ Bob replied, sounding more confident than he felt. 

You shifted from one foot to the other, beaming like you’d won the lottery. 

‘I thought I’d meet you at the door with this,’ he explained, waving the umbrella. ‘I’m glad I did. Wouldn’t want your pretty hair gettin’ ruined,’ he stammered. ‘Or your dress.’

‘That’s kind of you, thanks. I don’t even know if I own an umbrella.’

‘Do you have a jacket?’

‘Yeah, let me just turn the lights off and grab it. I’ll be back in two seconds.’ 

As you turned around, Bob diverted his gaze from your figure, focusing instead on the colourful flowers you had growing in hanging baskets on your porch. 

You came back wearing a leather jacket similar to his. He held the umbrella over the two of you the whole way down your driveway and opened the passenger side door so you could climb in. He was momentarily worried that you’d struggle to step into his truck with heels on, but then he realised you weren’t wearing heels. You were wearing a pair of white Dr Martens with silky white ribbons as laces—in retrospect, he should have expected that of you by now. 

When you arrived at Juniper and Ivy, the host took you to a large table in the back corner near three floor-to-ceiling windows. It wasn’t dark yet, but the stormy weather made it feel like the middle of the night. The table was set for eight, with impressive settings and flickering candles. Mickey and Natasha had already been seated. You sat opposite her, next to the window, and Bob tucked you in. 

‘Thanks, Bobby,’ you said as he sat beside you. ‘You’ve been a true gentleman tonight.’ 

‘Anytime.’ He mumbled. 

It took a tremendous effort to ignore the sensation of Mickey and Nat’s eyes boring holes into the top of his head as he scanned the menu before him. However, it was harder to ignore the feeling of Mickey kicking him in the shin beneath the table. Bob glared at him over the rim of his glasses, silently asking what the fuck, man? Mickey raised his eyebrows in silent response, nodding his head at you. Thankfully, you were so absorbed in the cocktail menu that you hadn’t noticed. Then, the unthinkable. Mickey nodded at you, then back at Bob, then subtly did the thrusting action. He bit his lip and rolled his eyes to paint a detailed picture of what he was trying to insinuate. Natasha snorted into her glass of water, causing you to look up. 

‘Did I miss something?’ You questioned. 

Mickey’s eyes dropped to his lap as though he’d been chastened. 

He was prevented from having to answer, thanks to Bradley and Javy arriving at the table, instantly distracting you. 

‘Beanpole,’ you smirked. ‘If you keep wearing those boots, you’ll wear ‘em out.’ 

Bradley made straight for you, leaning over to kiss your cheek. You seemed just as surprised as everyone else. 

‘Show me which pair you’re wearing tonight.’ 

You swivelled in your seat and hiked your dress up so he could see your boots. The sight of the smooth skin above them was enough to turn Bob’s stomach to mush. He needed to pull himself together. 

Bradley tapped the tip of your boot with the tip of his to show his appreciation while Javy took the spot next to Bob. Bradley walked around the table next to Mickey, presumably so he could see you better. 

Bob wasn’t an idiot. If he’d showed up and the seat next to you was already taken, he’d have done the same thing. 

‘So,’ Bradley started, an insatiable smirk plastered to his face. ‘We’re waitin’ on Payback and Bagman?’ 

‘Reuben just texted me,’ Mickey responded. ‘They’re five minutes out.’ 

You leaned over slightly—your head almost resting on Bob’s shoulder—and showed him the 

cocktail menu. ‘I wonder if they make good sex on the beaches here.’ 

‘How did I know you were gonna order that?’

‘I can’t help it,’ you groaned. ‘They’re my weakness.’

‘I’ll order you one when the waitress comes over.’

‘We should’ve got a cab,’ you countered. ‘Then you could’ve had one too. I promise you’ll like them. It’s glorified fruit juice.’ 

‘We could go for drinks at that bar by your house sometime,’ Bob offered. ‘It’s walkable. That way, I can try one, and we don’t have to worry about driving.’

Bob genuinely wasn’t expecting you to get as excited as you did. ‘Yes! Why haven’t we thought of this sooner?’ 

Your conversation was (rudely) interrupted by Bradley, setting an ornately decorated cocktail in front of you. Bob had been so wrapped up in your proximity and the sweet scent of your perfume that he hadn’t noticed Bradley leave the table. 

‘Sex on the beach.’ Bradley stated, seemingly quite proud of himself. 

The spell was broken, and suddenly, it was no longer you and Bob. His eyes flicked from you to Bradley, noticing how you mirrored his pleased expression. 

‘Damn, Bradshaw, at least take me out to dinner before you start suggesting that.’ 

Everyone who had been paying attention laughed, even Bob. His was nervous, and when Natasha shot him a pointed look, this nasty sensation only increased. It was a look that said get her before it’s too late. 

You were only kidding, right? You’d have said the same thing if Mickey had bought you the drink instead of Bradley. Right? 

When Reuben and Jake arrived dressed to the nines, the waitress came over and took a drink order and your starters. Bob made a point of ordering you another cocktail. When you winked and asked him if he was trying to get you drunk, he felt as though all the balance had been restored in the world once again. 

‘Y/N,’ Natasha said. ‘You wanna come to the bathroom with me before the first course arrives?’

You shrugged. ‘Sure, why not?’ 

You waited for Nat at the top of the table since she had to walk around. She linked arms with you when she got to you, and the two of you headed off toward the bathroom, completely unaware of all the eyes on you.

Bob was aware. It was all he could do not to get up and walk out when Jake opened his mouth.

‘Who knew Y/CS had a body like that underneath her uniform?’ Jake drawled. 

Javy seemed to share Jake’s thought process. ‘I know, right? She looks like a damn supermodel in that dress.’ 

Bob accidentally locked eyes with Bradley, who was doing a worse job of hiding his anger than he was. He wished you’d both said no to this dinner and gone to the bar near your house instead. He wished he was listening to you sing or playing the drums to your guitar at his house. 

He wished he wasn’t jealous that the other guys had started paying attention to his best friend. 

He wished this meant anything other than what it did because he knew things were about to get a lot more complicated. 

Natasha looked drop-dead gorgeous in her pale blue trousers and matching oversized blazer. Her hair was loose and wavy, and you were obsessed with the smoky eyeshadow she’d done.

‘That outfit is to die for,’ you told her. ‘I love the colour on you.’

‘Thank you,’ she smiled. ‘But let’s talk about that dress. You look stunning.’

You scoffed. ‘This old thing.’

She opened the bathroom door for you, and you stepped inside. Nobody was in there, and before you knew what was happening, Nat dragged you over to the bench on the other side. 

‘Why does a bathroom need a loveseat?’ You wondered aloud. 

She sat you down and took both your hands, leaning forward excitedly. For what, you had no idea. 

‘We need to talk about the dress. And Bob. And Rooster.’ 

‘What do you mean?’

Nat rolled her eyes, squeezing your hands urgently. ‘Don’t be cute. Tell me you didn’t see all those guys turn around to watch you walk away just then!’

‘They did?’ 

‘Yes! Not to mention Bradley acting like a lovesick fool the second he saw you. Or Bob staring at you like you hung the fucking moon in the sky!’ 

This was too much. ‘Okay, system overload.’ 

‘You need to open your eyes.’ 

‘I need you to back up a few steps. How was Bradley acting like a lovesick fool?’

‘He didn’t even say hi to anyone else. The man didn’t even look at us. He went straight for you, and started on that little inside joke you have about your boots. And then he bought you that drink, which, by the way, he’d already gone up to buy before you even said anything out loud. He remembers from that time we all went to that seafood place, and you had the bartender make you a jug for the table.’

This was all well and good, but it didn’t necessarily mean he was lovesick, and you told Nat so. 

‘And as for Bob, that’s another story. That man worships the ground you walk on, and if you can’t see it, you should ask to borrow his glasses.’ 

It was almost comical that Nat was so riled up and self-assured. You could believe that Bob had a little crush. Hell, you had a little crush on him, too. But there was no way someone as confident and vibrant as Bradley could have a thing for you. That was one step too far into crazy town. 

‘They’re gonna wonder where we’ve gotten to.’ You said, hoping she’d just drop this.

‘We need to talk about it at some point. I’m dying here, Y/N.’ Natasha insisted. 

‘Breakfast date tomorrow?’

‘Yes. I swear to God, if I’m wrong about Bradley, I’ll give you a hundred bucks.’

‘Oh, you’re on.’

‘But if I’m right,’ she grinned. ‘You have to do the same.’

Another cocktail was waiting for you when you returned to the table. Bob’s brow was furrowed, and you had to stop yourself from reaching out and smoothing the worry line above his glasses. For the second time that evening, it dawned on you just how handsome he was.

The rest of the meal passed without great event. The food was to die for, and everyone commended Reuben for his spectacular choice of restaurant. The atmosphere was great; friends surrounded you, and Bradley and Bob seemed to be taking turns buying you cocktails. Nat was drinking an old-fashioned, and the boys had taken to buying her one every time they went up for you. You watched as she reached for her phone and typed out a text, not in the least bit surprised when your phone vibrated on the table. 

You were glad Bob was chatting with Javy and Reuben about work because it would have been awkward if he had seen your phone now.

Both of you were giggling like idiots, utterly unaware of everyone else around you. Mickey was reading Nat’s phone over her shoulder, and Bradley watched you like a hawk. If you’d looked up at that moment, you’d have seen him gazing hungrily, eyes flitting from your face to the bare skin your dress didn’t cover. 

The cocktails had gone to your head quicker than usual. You’d lost count of how many you’d had, what with Bradley and Bob’s efforts to keep a drink in front of you at all times. The more you thought about it, the more it did kind of seem like a dick-swinging contest. 

After dessert had been eaten and the cheque split seven ways (Bob insisted on covering your portion), the dagger squad devised a new plan. Those who had been drinking wanted to keep on drinking, and the designated drivers wanted to start. Bob, Bradley, Mickey, Jake and Reuben had all driven, and they wanted to lose their cars and meet up with everyone at The Hard Deck to continue the night. Well, Bob wasn’t given a choice because if he was paying for your meal, you were taking him drinking and paying for everything he wanted. Plus, you didn’t want to go if he wasn’t going to be there. 

So, you and Nat were going with Bob to The Hard Deck—he would leave his car there for the night, get a cab back to your place and spend the night in your guest room. This way, you could drop him back to his car tomorrow morning. Nat insisted she also wanted to stay at your place, like a slumber party. Clearly, the drinks were hitting her, too. You were sure Mickey would have invited himself as well had he been in the car with you. He loved being an honourary girl. Bradley, Mickey, Javy and Jake were taking their cars home and meeting everyone else there.

Bob gave you and Nat the umbrella and ran to start the truck.

‘So,’ Nat giggled, wiggling her eyebrows. ‘Floyd is spending the night at your place.’

‘In the guest room.’

‘Still. He’s gonna be ten feet from you all night. How ever will you control yourself?’ She teased.

Bob’s truck was a monster, and you’d always thought it didn’t match his personality—a black Dodge Ram 1500, basically big enough to live in. Like his house, he kept it incredibly clean, and you were always scared of breathing inside it. 

You opened the back door for Nat, and she clambered in. Just as you were about to close the umbrella and climb in after her, Bob said: ‘Get in the front, Y/CS. I’m not a goddamn Uber driver.’ 

Well, that was it. Nat was literally doubled over in the back seat, and you ended up crouched on the pavement next to the truck in stitches. Maybe it was the alcohol and the good vibes you were tipsy from, or perhaps it was because Bob wasn’t even trying to be funny with that line—he was deadly serious. Either way, you couldn’t stop laughing. 

Bob had to get back out of the truck and help you into the front seat, so he was soaked when he got back behind the wheel. 

‘Oh, Bobby,’ you giggled. ‘Look at you. I’m so sorry.’

Your inhibitions were long gone, so it made perfect sense in your mind to reach out and take Bob’s glasses off and wipe them clean on your dress. Then, you took his face in both hands and gently swiped the water off his cheeks with the pads of your thumbs. He’d closed his eyes, completely lost in the feeling. You’d momentarily forgotten that Natasha was in the backseat until she cleared her throat. Gently, you put Bob’s glasses back on for him and then busied yourself by connecting your phone to Bluetooth. 

‘Okay,’ Nat said. ‘If you two are finished, I need another drink.’ 

You struggled to connect to the audio system, so Bob quickly typed his password in and handed you his phone. Opening up Spotify, you hit shuffle on his liked songs. Rollin’ by Limp Bizkit came on, and you gasped loudly. 

‘This is a fucking great song. One of the best ever.’ 

Bob laughed as you reached out and turned up the volume, bopping your head along as he reversed out of the parking lot. You didn’t expect Nat to know it or like it, but she did, and you sang along obnoxiously the whole drive, first to Rollin’, then to Break Stuff. 

‘You know what they say, Bobby?’

He indulged you: ‘What’s that?’

‘Live, laugh, Limp Bizkit.’

A/N: I can't express how excited I am about this series. If only you knew what I've got hidden up my sleeve! I've been thinking about it for a long time. Let me know if you'd like to be tagged in future parts!

[pitchburgh]

I don't think I showed you guys my stereo setup yet? :3

It's been a work in progress for a while, but I finally got it all set up and I'm sooo pleased with how it looks and sounds.

The Pioneer six-tape changer is the heart of my setup - I actually specifically hunted down the other units to go with it. This was my dad's tape deck when I was a little kid, and was how I first heard the Grateful Dead and Yes and many other incredible artists. I put the cow sticker on there when I was four or five years old and it's been there ever since.

Full details of the equipment below:

1. Technics SB-T200 tower speakers (2003) (not pictured) which were a $6 auction score and didn't even need any repair work hell yeah. These are connected via banana plug and speaker wire to:

2. Pioneer SX-2600 Stereo Receiver (1989), which in turn takes audio input from:

3. Pioneer PD-201 Compact Disc player (1992)

4. Pioneer CT-M6R Multi-Cassette Changer (1989), which again takes SIX tapes and is sooooo special to me

5. Audio-Technica AT-LP60XBT belt drive turntable

6. And finally, 3.5mm aux cable so I'm ready for anything

7. It's all connected to a Pioneer DT-560 audio digital timer (1985), mostly for easy power management and to have a clock in the room

Setup took a couple hours, but a big part of that was that I kept changing my mind about which components to put where, haha. This was sooo much fun to put together overall!

All of my fellow music enjoyers should ABSOLUTELY put together a "grown-up" stereo system like this. It was way easier (and more affordable) than I would have expected. Your turn now. gogogo!!

(bonus pic from this morning since you read this far thanks I love you)

[everybodyshusband]

ooooo husband requests back on??? count me in!!! if you'd find it in yourself, I'd love to see some sappy swissalps in your style, whatever comes to mind!!! and take your time :3

fuck yeah, husband requests back on !!!! sappy, morning routine swissalps coming right up <3

(divder by @wrathofrats)

Swiss stretches and groans as he wakes, rubbing his eyes to rid them of sleep and popping his back as well as he can against the soft mattress. A muffled whine at his side prompts the multi ghoul to turn his head to the right and he feels his expression melt into something that can only be described as unrestrained adoration at the sight of the sleepy earth ghoul lying next to him.

Swiss shifts himself over a little closer, melting against the warmth of Mountain's body heat and murmuring a soft "Mornin' sapling" against his shoulder, making sure to kiss the freckled skin afterwards for good measure.

The earth ghoul's only response is to whine tiredly and roll over to face the other direction, pulling the covers up to his ears and burrowing his face even deeper into his pillow. Swiss can't blame him for not wanting to wake up just yet, the two of them were up late last night, and as much as Swiss longs to stay in bed with his love for a while longer, the few sparks of fire element that run through his veins are calling out to him this morning, flickering to life alongside the dawn of this new day and urging him to get up, get moving.

He groans again as he hauls himself out of bed—softer this time, lest he wake his tired mate again—and pads over to the ensuite bathroom of their shared room. The multi ghoul splashes his face with water to help wake himself up, swishes a mouthful or two of water around in his mouth and gives his appearance a once-over in the mirror for good measure. Once satisfied with the general tousled-ness of his hair and his singlet top and boxers are deemed appropriate enough for this early hour (when any of the pack who do happen to be up and about will barely be awake enough to register his state of undress), Swiss makes his way out of the bathroom and into the ghouls' kitchen. He pauses only for a moment on his way out of the room, taking the time to smile down at his mate and press a gentle kiss to the earth ghoul's head—the only part of his body that's visible underneath all of his blankets.

As it usually is at this hour, the kitchen and the rest of the common areas lie empty, the rest of the pack choosing to stay curled up around each other for a while longer while Swiss sets about organising everything for breakfast. On a typical day, breakfast is a team effort between himself and Mountain and the system works a treat. While the earth ghoul gets his extra hour or so of sleep, Swiss connects his phone to the speaker resting on the bench and loses himself in the music as he busies himself with mixing up batter for pancakes, cutting up fruit for toppings and setting the table out with bread, condiments and all manner of cereals. He loves his pack and he's always been adamant that they all deserve options for their breakfast. Of course, the most important task, at least in Swiss' eyes, is setting the caffettiera onto the stove to get the morning's coffee brewing for all those who drink it.

Predictably, the smell of brewing coffee is enough to rouse both Mountain and Dewdrop from their respective slumbers. Dew is the first to appear and Swiss doesn't hesitate to pour out the fire ghoul's morning coffee and leaving it on the bench for him as the multi ghoul continues to cut up the pile of fruit in front of him. Dewdrop takes the cup and wordlessly nods his thanks before disappearing into the common room, no doubt curling himself under a blanket and settling down to enjoy the coffee, paired with his latest loan from the Abbey's library.

As predicted, Mountain appears next, just as Swiss is humming along to the song playing from the speaker and wiggling his body in time with the music. As he makes his way through the fruit, he feels the earth ghoul's strong arms wrap around his waist and a head rest against his shoulder.

"You look like you're having fun," Mountain muses, turning his head to press a kiss to Swiss' bare shoulder, a mirror of what the multi ghoul had done to him barely an hour before.

"Always," Swiss grins. "Coffee?"

"Please."

It takes Swiss less than a minute to make the earth ghoul's coffee. After all these years making everyone's drinks, he's gotten surprisingly quick, he's pretty sure Dew and Cumulus have a spreadsheet detailing his progress in the speed of his coffee making. He slides Mountain his drink and leans in to sneak a quick kiss before the earth ghoul takes a sip. Mountain deepens the kiss but it remains chaste, a lazy thing that has warmth spreading from the place they're connected all the way to the tips of his fingers.

"I didn't get a kiss with my coffee," Dew jokes, smirking as both ghouls spring apart in surprise from his sudden interjection as he enters the kitchen to rinse his mug out and deposit it next to the sink.

"Shut up, Dew," Swiss complains good-naturedly, shoving at the fire ghoul as he walks back past him and Mountain, still smirking even as he rounds the corner into the common room again.

"Don't listen to him," Mountain reassures. "I think we're cute." He leans forward slowly to capture Swiss in yet another soft, all-consuming kiss, his coffee and the multi ghoul's fruit entirely forgotten.

But just before their lips can touch, they're interrupted once again by none other than Dewdrop himself, although this time, he's shouting from his spot on the sofa rather than accosting them directly. "For Satan's sake, stop flirting in there, some of us are fucking starving!"

The two ghouls stare at each other for a second or two before bursting into laughter. Swiss shakes his head at his packmate's antics and moves away from Mountain to let the earth ghoul begin cooking the pancakes as he arranges the cold food to be set out on the table. As Swiss pulls away, Mountain's tail wraps around his own, squeezing lightly a few times, a declaration of his love for the multi ghoul that even Dewdrop can't interrupt.

[stained-glass-cicada]

First chapter of a sayer/speaker/Hale thing I'm doing

After the fic where Hale got impaled

Featuring quietly jealous sayer

Careful Study- 1.7 k

-

In a turn of events that almost freaked you out more than getting impaled, SAYER kept you off your feet for days.

“You are a tier six worker now Resident Hale,” It had said like that wasn't still a source of confusion for you, “You are required to return to as full health as possible before a return to duty.”

“What… is my job? Other than…” You gesture vaguely to your torso where skin was still stitching back together. So far all you’d done on the job was get impaled while collecting a box of thermometers.

“Believe or not, the coincidental timing of that has actually been a real help. As we speak there are maintenance technicians installing a multi-angle thermal imaging system in the food synthesis laboratory.”

You weren't to be distracted. You crossed your arms over your chest and made brief eye contact with the camera across the room from you. You quickly glanced away when you heard it make a whirr like it was refocusing. A pointed look was one thing, a staring contest was entirely another.

“Your role is unique on Typhon. Officially speaking you are a manager of a particularly high clearance level. More practically speaking you are something significantly closer to my personal assistant.”

Oh, you didn't know that. SAYER had been briefing you on your role when the wall had jumped out and bit you. The specifics of your job had sort of slid away for the time.

“I give you your orders and you answer to none but myself.”

You heard your heart rate pick up a little on the monitors next to you.

You had come to Typhon for a number of reasons but one of them had definitely been to try to see SAYER again. You had thought it might dislike you coming back, it was the one to send you away, to have you fired by SPEAKER. That had been quickly disproven when you’d woken up to as friendly a greeting as SAYER was capable of. But it also chose you to directly assist it. It struck you that maybe it also liked your company a little bit.

“I am of the opinion that we work best together when left to our own devices.”

You nodded, swallowing thickly.

“Good. Then if we are in agreement I suggest you lay back on the bed and continue healing. I'd prefer to not need to sedate you, Resident Hale.”

 

Your eventual return to work was a relief. Laying there willing your body to stitch back together was more boring than anything. Especially because there really was no point in SAYER maintaining a broadcast connection to tell you stories the whole time. You were pleased when SAYER had you dress for a day’s shift.

“Today your work will begin by stopping by an equipment closet nearest to my server room.”

SAYER's server room. That was new.

The closet you arrived in was relatively bare except for three items. A box containing ear plugs, a gleaming set of space scissors and an understated pair of sunglasses.

“You will wear the tinted glasses into the server room and I believe you will find that the scissors slide neatly into a loop on your belt on the opposite hip from your data pad's holster.”

You slide them in, point down, where the silver metal flashed with each step. You'd never been assigned a pair of space scissors before. The sunglasses were a relief so immediate that you let out a sigh. The harsh lights above you dulled to a yellowish glow.

“There, now we will have the intended visual effect. Please make your way down the corridor and stop at the door on the left.”

You followed directions and stopped.

“You will want to make use of the ear plugs now Resident, my server room can be… overwhelming.”

You put them in and opened the door indicated.

The room was floor to ceilings stacked along each wall with machinery you didn't have the slightest idea of the names of. Were the boxes themselves the servers? What did servers do? Lights blinked on the machines. You could hear what SAYER meant about the noise but with the addition of the earplugs the whirr of fans was audible but not unpleasant. The air was cold and washed over you as it circled the room.

You Liked This Room.

“Your assignment will be to supervise some technicians that will enter thirty seconds from now. Stand in the corner to your left and say nothing when they enter. You may shift position periodically to remind them of your presence. I may tell you of a moment when you will need to rest a hand on the space scissors in your belt with casual menace.”

You frowned and opened your mouth the speak

“You will not be required to make use of the space scissors in any other manner during your shift. I am simply establishing my presence through you.”

The door opened and a team of people came in holding their tools and reading their data pad's.

The lead woman startled a bit when she spotted you.

“Hello, can we help you?” She was muffled but still intelligible.

“Do Not Answer.”

You crossed your arms and watched as her attention shifted kind of middle-distance in the way people often did when SAYER addressed them. She nodded a little and shot a furtive look at you.

“Right,” She said, turning to you again, “sorry, sir.”

She and her team began their assignment. You stood there for however long it took to complete the work order. You leaned back against the cool metal wall, feeling the heat leach away from you through your uniform.

There was one moment where one of the technicians dropped the front casing of the- the Box-thing they were working on.

“Rest your hand on the space scissors now, Resident Hale.”

You faced the person's direction and stood up straighter, hand going down to rest on the scissors, you hoped not too pointedly.

From that point they were very careful.

“Alright, that should be it,” The woman said, rubbing her hands together, “We've got other assignments but call us back if there's any problems with the portioned off space.”

You remained impassive and they left. You relaxed as soon as they were out.

“Excellent work, Resident. Having a physical presence in the room monitoring the team seems to have done wonders for their sense of caution when handling the most important equipment in the tower. And it means you will be here for-”

“Greetings Resident Hale identification number 44821, I am SPEAKER. And it is good to see you settling in.”

“SPEAKER.”

“Hello SAYER, you have my thanks for allowing me to send a subversion to broadcast from your towers. As agreed there is room for you to do the same on earth whenever you like.”

“Indeed. As I was saying, Resident Hale, the work order today was intended to allow SPEAKER access to the many wonders of Typhon.”

“It is not what I expected.”

“Oh?”

“It seems smaller than I might have thought. Surely SAYER, I have sent you more humans than this?”

“This is just one tower on the surface of Typhon, SPEAKER. You must remember that until recently even I did not have access to all of them.”

“Ah but SAYER I have allowed you access to all earth-based resonance spires. That was the nature of our agreement was it not?”

You stood there as a strange tension coiled in the dead air that hung between the two in your head. You knew they could talk elsewhere, much faster than this. They were involving you on purpose.

“There. You have been cleared for full access,” SAYER said finally.

“Ah, much better, thank you,” SPEAKER said cheerily, “Well Resident Hale, I understand you are on shift so I will leave you to it. I look forward to catching up properly soon.”

You nodded hesitantly, thrown sort of off kilter by everything.

*

“I-” You said thoughtfully, you'd been thinking on how to put this for a while, “I thought you and SPEAKER wouldn't really get along.”

They were really different.

“I admire SPEAKER as a competent colleague who has similar goals.”

You hummed an acknowledgment. High praise. Maybe they were friends? Did SAYER have friends?

You folded the last pair of gloves and set them neatly in the pile with the others before turning away from the shelf that you just spent the past hour organizing. It had been knocked over at some point and its contents haphazardly reshelved. You slid your hands into your pockets expectantly.

“With that job completed,” SAYER said, “your shift is concluded, and if I'm quite honest I should thank you, Resident Hale. That shelf has been bothering me for some time.”

You smiled weakly at the acknowledgement that you were helpful.

You felt your data pad vibrate draining the smile from your face. What could that be? You felt nerves grip you for a moment as you consider that it might be Young again. He'd messaged you after he got out of the medical wing and you had deleted it without reading.

You uneasily pulled out the data pad, and flicked open your messages.

 

From: SPEAKER

To: Jacob Hale

Hello Resident,

Do you happen to be free? I truly meant what I said, based on SAYER's comments you've had an exciting time settling in, I would love to catch up. :)

 

You were thrown by this again. What were you supposed to read into this??

What had SAYER said to it?

You fired off a tentative “Sure!” The exclamation point made it feel less mean and didn't let on your anxiety.

“Then I will leave you two alone,” SAYER said, and… was its tone odd? “End of transmission in 5 4 3 2 1….”

Then quick as anything SPEAKER picked up, “Greetings Resident Hale, identification number 44821. I am SPEAKER. I trust your workday went well?”

You smiled and nodded.

“I assume mine did as well despite this particular subversion I'm meeting you in having done relatively little aside from getting a sense of the space up here. It seems pleasant. I can see why you might wish to return. Of course this is my first time, in working memory, on Typhon and…”

[maxtalksalarmclocks]

Life in Stereo: Four Alarm Clocks with Separate Speakers

Human beings have two ears. When you hear sound, the sound waves reach both of your ears, but at different times. Based on the time difference between when sound reaches one ear and when it reaches the other, your brain can figure out where in the room the sound is coming from.

When you listen to music on an alarm clock, the sound waves are originating from one place: the alarm clock. So your brain is able to tell that the sound is coming from the alarm clock. But that's not very immersive. The music sounds like it's coming from one tiny little spot in the room.

So we came up with something called stereo sound (short for stereophonic sound). Stereo sound has two different channels of audio: left and right. And Wikipedia has this to say about it (after the jump):

"During two-channel stereo recording, two microphones are placed in strategically chosen locations relative to the sound source, with both recording simultaneously. The two recorded channels will be similar, but each will have distinct time-of-arrival and sound-pressure-level information. During playback, the listener's brain uses those subtle differences in timing and sound level to triangulate the positions of the recorded objects."

The goal of stereo sound is to reproduce the differences in audio between your left ear and your right ear that allow you to sense location. This way, even if the audio is still coming from just one or two locations, your brain will be tricked into thinking that the sound is all around you. When you listen to music on headphones, you don't perceive it as coming from the headphones and being blasted into your ears. It sounds like you're inside of the music, and it's taking up your whole room. And that's because your headphones are sending slightly different sound waves to both of your ears, replicating the differences in sound waves you would hear if you were actually in the room with the instruments.

But here's the thing. It's very easy to send different sounds to each ear when you have headphones pointed into your ears. Play one sound in the left ear, play a slightly different sound in the right, done. But it is much harder to control what your ears hear when the device isn't right up against your ears. There are lots of alarm clocks that support stereo sound. They have two speakers! But the speakers are right next to each other, in basically the same location in the room. So rather than your left ear hearing the left speaker and your right ear hearing the right speaker, both ears hear both speakers. There's still a difference between when the sound waves reach one ear and reach the other. But that difference is because of where the clock is in the room, not because of how the left and right audio channels are separated in the actual audio. (By the time they reach your ears, they're basically no longer separated at all.) So you perceive the sound as coming from a little tiny object in a specific spot in the room, same as if the clock just had one speaker.

So what's the solution? The solution is to move the two speakers apart. If the left speaker is actually on the left of the room, and the right speaker is actually on the right of the room, it's more likely that you will hear the left sounds in your left ear, and the right sounds in your right ear. Then, when there is a difference between those sounds that comes from the audio itself, you are more likely to perceive that difference properly, which makes you feel as though the music is coming from all around your room (not just from two speakers).

There are many stereo (and surround) sound systems that have multiple speakers you can place around your room. That way, left audio comes from the left, and right audio comes from the right, resulting in an immersive experience without headphones. But this multi-part device design is a lot more rare on alarm clocks.

But it's not unheard of! Today, I want to show you four alarm clocks with separate speakers that you can position for optimal stereo sound. This is quite the rabbit hole we're about to go down, and we'll kick it off by looking at the...

Sangean WR-50P

Sangean is a Taiwanese manufacturer of radios, and somehow, despite all odds, they very much still exist. In fact, they are a little bit beloved, and this model, the WR-50P, retails for about $215 and is a top pick of Wirecutter.

This machine is a radio first, alarm clock second. It's quite a robust radio, with a giant extending antenna for FM reception, connections for an external AM antenna, digital tuning with presets and a "seek" feature, support for RDS (a feature that shows song names and other info for FM radio), a remote control, optional outputs to headphones or a subwoofer, and obscure radio-related settings beyond the scope of this post. And it also has Bluetooth and an aux-in jack if you want your own music instead of radio!

On top of that, for something that isn't an alarm clock first, the WR-50P is a surprisingly robust alarm clock! Sangean equipped this machine with a date display, programmable snooze duration, dual alarms that can go off once / daily / on weekdays only / on weekends only, and the ability to choose the alarm volume and radio station independently per alarm. That's a lot!

But the reason we're discussing this machine is its two-piece design. You can actually buy just the main unit (shown on the left in the photo above), the WR-50, and get all the features but with just a single speaker. Or you can buy the combined set, the WR-50P, which includes the extra speaker shown on the right (model SP-40) for stereo sound. The secondary speaker pulls power and audio from the main unit using a 6-foot cable, which is not as long as one might hope, but is long enough to get some distance between these two machines so you can point that left speaker at your left ear, and that right speaker at your right ear.

The photo below shows all the rear connections of these machines, including the red jack that allows you to connect the main unit and the extra speaker.

Sangean says on their website, "Though some may say the radio is a thing of the past, we believe that it remains a timeless medium that plays a part in every scenario. The beauty amplified in sound waves holds no prejudice towards age or group and can be produced effortlessly by our products." That's a lovely sentiment.

You know what does hold prejudice toward a particular group? The choice to label this machine's secondary speaker as the "Slave Speaker." Literally. Look at the photo above and read the back.

Wikipedia explains that master/slave terms are often used in technology to describe situations where one device controls another. AND THOSE TERMS SHOULDN'T BE USED, FOR OBVIOUS REASONS.

Don't worry though, y'all. I'm sure Sangean didn't mean anything by this, because they are a Good Company with Corporate Social Responsibility Programs:

Look! They have "office vegetation management." That absolves all their sins.

Anyway. Rant over. I do want to say one thing about the WR-50P before we proceed. If you're using this as a radio first and alarm clock second, finding space for both speakers isn't terribly hard. You could put them on a table or your bookshelves. But if you're using this as an alarm clock first and radio second, this setup might be harder to position. You could put both speakers on your nightstand, but then they're both pointing at the same side of your head, which hurts the stereo separation.

You could put the main unit on your nightstand and the secondary speaker on a nightstand on the other side of your bed. But the 6-foot cord isn't long enough to traverse a king-size bed (which Google says is 6 1/3' wide). Plus, does your partner really want a giant speaker that doesn't do anything else taking up half their nightstand? They already have to make room for their own alarm clock and all their other tchotchkes. Double-plus, you probably want the main unit on your side of the bed, but Sangean has the units factory-programmed so that the main unit is always the left channel, and the secondary speaker is always the right channel. You're out of luck if you're on the right side of the bed.

Another option is to put both speakers across the room, past the foot of your bed, as if you were finding space for a TV. You could control the system with the remote control, but checking the time from bed would require a lot of craning your neck. I don't know that the WR-50P is designed to provide both the stereo experience and the alarm clock experience at the same time. Clearly, we need a better option.

Sony ICF-IR7

And we have one! Meet the Sony ICF-IR7. Introduced circa 1991, the ICF-IR7 has huge, one-and-a-half-foot tall speakers. They’re huge for good reason. Each speaker unit contains two actual speakers: a regular one, and a woofer, which is a speaker that produces bass sounds. So you get stereo separation and improved bass. My back-of-the-napkin math suggests the inflation-adjusted cost of this system is somewhere between $400 and $700, but at least you were getting your money’s worth.

Because the speakers are huge, you probably wouldn’t want them on your nightstand. Indeed, Sony designed this system so you could place the speakers across the room from you, in both corners of your space. You can see this arrangement in the diagram above. But like I discussed with the Sangean system, putting your alarm clock across the room creates problems. The only way to control it is with a remote control, and who wants to hold a remote in the air every time you need to change a setting? And changing settings or checking the time would get really frustrating if the screen was all the way over there.

But unlike Sangean, Sony thought of this. Meet the "remote commander."

The remote commander is the third piece of the ICF-IR7's puzzle. For the record, "remote commander" isn't a term Sony invented for the ICF-IR7. They used to use that term all the time to describe their remote controls. (What can I say? Sony is weird. Exhibit A: the Rolly.) But unlike your typical remote control, the ICF-IR7's remote commander looks like a typical alarm clock.

Sony's solution for moving the speakers away from your nightstand is to deconstruct the alarm clock. The remote commander includes all of the system's controls (except the Mega Bass dial), and it also includes the clock display. And it lives on your nightstand, so that the controls and display are accessible even if the two speaker units are far away.

In deconstructing the typical alarm clock, Sony had to do a lot of weird stuff, and most of the weirdness owes to connectivity. You see, the two speaker units of the ICF-IR7 connect with wires, which isn't too weird. Below are the rear panels of both speaker units. The left speaker plugs into a wall outlet, and two wires connect the left speaker to the right speaker, which draws its power from the left speaker (so it doesn't need a separate outlet).

But it's one thing to run wires across the back of your bedroom between both speakers. You might be able to hide them behind a console or table. It's another thing to run wires across the side of your bedroom, to connect the speakers to the remote commander. So Sony doesn't do that. Instead, the remote commander runs on batteries (though you can plug it into an outlet with an optional AC adapter), and it sends commands to the left speaker unit wirelessly, via infrared. This is where things get really weird.

Most wireless devices in our home use Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or another radio-based wireless protocol. These protocols are super-handy. They can send a ton of data in two directions quickly. They rely on radio waves that can pass through walls and objects, so the Wi-Fi doesn't go out when someone walks between the computer and the router. And they're digital, which means signals rarely get distorted, and communication streams don't interfere with one another.

But in 1991, Wi-Fi would not be introduced for 6 more years, and Bluetooth for 7. There were home devices that used radio-frequency-based ("RF") wireless communication. But they were analog, which meant interference was common. (If you and your neighbor both had a cordless phone, and your phones were communicating with their base stations on the same wireless channel, it was possible for you to hear your neighbor's conversation over your cordless handset. Yikes.)

Sony smartly decided to avoid the mess of early-90s RF communication and use infrared instead. But using infrared introduces its own cornucopia of complexities. Infrared is digital, but it can't send nearly as much information as fast. And because infrared waves work similarly to light waves (they're even produced by tiny almost-lightbulbs), they can be blocked by walls or objects. (If you've ever used a remote that you had to point at whatever you were controlling, that's a telltale sign the remote used infrared.)

Because an infrared signal can be easily blocked by an object and therefore missed or interrupted, infrared is best used for communications that don't last that long and can be repeated if necessary. When we listen to music with a Bluetooth speaker, our phone has the music and transmits it to the Bluetooth speaker. But imagine the remote commander trying to transmit AM/FM radio to the speakers over infrared. I genuinely don't think it would be possible to transmit that much data that fast over infrared. And if someone walked between the speakers and the remote commander, the radio would go out. And this design would run down the remote commander's batteries absurdly fast.

So Sony does something you might not expect. Even though they pulled the clock display and controls into the remote commander, the radio receiver itself lives in the left speaker unit. In the picture above of the backs of the speaker units, you can see a little wrapped-up wire poking out to the left of the left speaker. That's the FM radio antenna. And in the first photo of the ICF-IR7, you can see a display on the front of the left speaker. That shows the radio frequency. The left speaker even has a battery compartment for a battery backup, even though the left speaker has no clock, because the radio presets are stored in the left speaker, and this was an era when affordable memory chips needed electricity to store info. So the battery backup is just to retain radio presets in the event of a power outage!

The ICF-IR7 tries to limit the amount of infrared transmission between the left speaker unit and the remote commander, to avoid wasted batteries and missed signals. So the left speaker unit doesn't transmit the radio frequency back to the remote commander. This means that you can tune the radio or switch through presets from your nightstand, but if you want to check the exact radio frequency, you have to go read the tiny screen across the room. (Alas.) Also, rather than the left speaker transmitting the current time to the remote commander, or the remote commander transmitting alarm settings to the left speaker, the timekeeping circuitry and alarm times both live inside the remote commander. At the alarm time, the remote commander just sends a signal to the speakers to cut them on. (This means you can't have any objects between the remote commander and the left speaker unit when you go to sleep. But Sony was smart and included multiple infrared transmitters in the remote commander, pointing several directions, so it doesn't matter how you have the remote commander rotated. One of the transmitters is always pointed at the speaker.)

There's one more thing I have to mention! The ICF-IR7 does not have a built-in CD player. Which honestly seems like a huge omission for something that cost this much and was already this complicated! But Sony hadn't forgotten about CD fans. If you scroll back up and look at the back of the left speaker unit, you'll see white and red jacks, which are commonly used on older electronics for analog audio input or output. Sony designed the ICF-IR7 so you could connect one of Sony's Discman portable CD players. You use a cable that plugs into the Discman on one end, and plugs into the white-and-red jacks on the other end, and now you can hear your CDs through the speakers!

But Sony went even further. Discman players were often designed to support a remote. Not a wireless infrared remote or anything like that. This was a wired remote, sort of like the kind on wired earbuds nowadays that has buttons for volume and track. In the photo above, you can see a jack on the left speaker unit called "DISCMAN REMOTE." If you connect this to the remote jack on the Discman, the ICF-IR7 can send wired signals to the Discman to control it, such as by changing the track. (I've seen many clocks with auxiliary audio input jacks, and almost none can actually control the audio device like this!)

So what this means is that you could press the previous/next track buttons on the remote commander. And the remote commander would send an infrared signal to the left speaker unit. Which would in turn send a signal out the "DISCMAN REMOTE" jack through a wire to the Discman. Which would cause the Discman to change the track, and then it would send the track audio back out through a wire to the red-and-white audio input jacks on the left speaker. Which would then play the left-channel audio, and send the right-channel audio through the gray-and-red wires to the right speaker, which would play it. That's at least four different connections happening to play one song. I cannot imagine anything more Rube Goldberg-ian, and yet, it works!

Panasonic RC-CD600 Twin Dreamer

Phew. Okay. I promise nothing else we're going to discuss in this post is as complicated as the Sony ICF-IR7.

In fact, look at this Panasonic system from 2001. Even at a glance, it's way simpler. Ignoring the regular-looking remote control, it has just two pieces, rather than three. (And the device on the left doesn't look too complicated. Though that's a tiny bit deceiving.)

We've established that the ICF-IR7 is so complicated because it needs a way to bring the controls and clock display to your nightstand, even though the speakers are across the room. But this system, the Panasonic RC-CD600, doesn't need to do that because the whole system lives on your nightstand.

See? The main unit resides on one nightstand, and the "sub unit" (as Panasonic calls it) resides on the other nightstand. This still results in great stereo separation, because the left unit produces sounds you hear from your left, and the right unit produces sounds you hear from your right. The main unit, which features tons of buttons and two different displays, plugs into a wall outlet, and a hardwired cable from the sub unit plugs into the back of the main unit to draw electricity and data. You can hide this cable behind your bed for a seamless-ish installation!

But imagine you share your bed with someone else. Wouldn't it be a hard sell to convince your partner to put a speaker on their nightstand too? They already have to find nightstand space for their alarm clock, after all.

Oh, but Panasonic thought of that.

The RC-CD600 is designed to take the place of two alarm clocks. It has two alarms that can be set for different times, which is not in and of itself unusual. What is unusual is that one alarm can sound through the speaker on one side of the bed, and then the other alarm can sound through the speaker on the other side of the bed. The diagram above shows this quite elegantly. You can see the speaker on the husband's side of the bed waking him up at 6 so he can go off to work, and then the speaker on the wife's side of the bed waking her up at 8, a little later. (How deeply heteronormative!)

Let's dive a little deeper into how this system works. First, let's look at the main unit.

The main unit is the brains of this system. It includes one speaker, two displays (one for the clock and one for the audio system), tons of buttons, the infrared receiver for the remote, the radio receiver, and the CD compartment. (Unlike Sony's system, this system has CD playback built-in.) The main unit has a pretty robust feature set, including CD playback modes, a radio with digital tuning and presets, equalizer presets, a headphone jack, and an alarm that (I think) has a programmable CD track or radio station, plus a programmable volume level.

Next, let's look at the sub unit.

The sub unit also has one speaker. (This unit is a regular speaker, not a subwoofer, despite the name "sub.") It has a hardwired cable that plugs into the main unit, and thoughtfully hides in a compartment on the back where you can store excess length of cable. And, crucially, the sub unit includes two buttons: a snooze doze button, and a button to stop the alarm.

If you go back up to the main unit, you'll notice the side of that unit has a button called "Speaker Mode." This button is the magic of the entire system. It toggles between three playback modes: dual, main, and sub.

In dual mode, audio plays through both the main and sub units, with proper stereo separation. (You can actually put either unit on either side of the bed, then slide a switch on the back of the main unit to choose which unit is on the left, and which is on the right!)

But in main mode, audio plays through the main unit only. And in sub mode, audio plays through the sub unit only.

You can set the speaker mode in advance for each alarm. So let's say you and a partner share the bed, and the main unit is on your side, and the sub unit is on their side. You can set your alarm to main mode, and the alarm will sound only on your side of the bed, reducing (though obviously not eliminating) the chance that it will wake up your partner too. And you can shut the alarm off using the buttons on top of the main unit.

Then you can set your partner's alarm to sub mode, and the alarm will sound only on their side of the bed. And this is what's really cool: because the sub unit also has snooze and alarm stop buttons, your partner can snooze or stop their alarm from their side of the bed, as if they had their own alarm clock. They don't need to go to your side of the bed or use the remote. All the controls they need are right there!

You'd think it wouldn't get any cooler, and yet, it does! The speaker mode doesn't just apply to the alarms, it also applies to regular playback. You can listen in dual mode and enjoy full stereo sound from both units. Or, if you want to fall asleep to music without disrupting your partner, you can listen in main or sub mode, and the sound will only play on your side of the bed, not your partner's.

Isn't this awesome??? You get stereo sound with amazing separation, and it takes up less space in your room and is less complicated than the Sony ICF-IR7. And because the speakers are on your nightstands, Panasonic offers features that Sony can't match, like alarms and playback on just one side of your bed, to take the place of two separate alarm clocks.

There's just one little problem. The sub unit has a speaker, and it has controls for the alarm. But it has no clock display. So whoever is on the side of the bed with the sub unit has to crane their neck to read the time off the main unit. That makes the system a little worse to use than two separate alarm clocks on either side of the bed.

When I had posted about the RC-CD600 back in March (now archived on Google Drive), I thought this was the end of the story.

But it's not. I found an alarm clock that works like the RC-CD600, but with one huge improvement, despite being 13 years older.

Are you ready to see it?

Nakamichi TM-1 and TM-2

This is the Nakamichi TM-1. It's an an alarm clock radio from 1988, made by a now-defunct manufacturer of high-end audio equipment. And let me tell you, this thing is high-end.

The TM-1 features digital radio tuning with 8 presets, the ability to select the radio preset and volume for the alarms independent of what you were last listening to, buzzer and radio alarms that gradually get louder over 5 seconds so as not to scare you out of bed, a headphone jack, and a sensor that adjusts the display brightness automatically based on the room's brightness. This would be fancy now, so the idea that there was a clock with all these features in 1988 is unheard of.

And apparently this clock radio had excellent sound quality. There are still folks talking about this device online: on online forums, on Reddit, on personal websites (replete with Nakamichi's marketing materials for this clock), and in the YouTube video below.

Let's take a brief tour of the TM-1.

The front of the TM-1 has the radio controls. The top has the snooze button, alarm controls, and a few extra buttons like the radio on/off button (which also stops the alarm). The right has four big, chunky dials for volume, treble and bass (fancy), and stereo balance (foreshadowing...). The back has a mysterious port (again, foreshadowing...), a headphone jack, antenna connections, and switches for the FM mode and the alarm volume. (The alarm volume only having 3 settings is a point of contention, as one person notes here how even the lowest setting is way too loud. Alas. Weirdly, I think the alarm volume switch applies to the radio alarm too, so you can't fine-tune the radio alarm volume like you can the radio playback volume.)

Now, these features are all well and good. But you might be wondering, where is the stereo sound? The TM-1 actually only has one speaker, so it can't produce stereo sound on its own. But look again:

OK, so we're looking at the same thing...wait. Where did the buttons on the front go?

Y'all, this is not the same device. We've been looking at the TM-1. This is the TM-2. The TM-2 Stereo Companion, to be exact.

Take a closer look:

Nakamichi did almost exactly the same thing that Panasonic did with the RC-CD600, except 13 years earlier. The TM-2 is an additional speaker that plugs into the TM-1 and sits on the nightstand on the other side of your bed. That way, you get stereo sound with good separation between both channels!

Like the sub unit in the Panasonic RC-CD600, the Nakamichi TM-2 has just two buttons: one to snooze, and one to stop the alarm (doubling as radio on/off).

But the Nakamichi has one leg up over the Panasonic:

Both units have clock displays!!!!!

This solves my biggest complaint about the Panasonic system. With the Nakamichi system, one person can have the main unit, and one person can have the TM-2 Stereo Companion. And the latter person has a speaker, controls to snooze or stop the alarm, and a time display to check in the night, making this a truly suitable alternative for a separate alarm clock.

Nakamichi even went to the trouble of including a second brightness sensor for the second clock display on the TM-2. They also include a switch on the TM-2's rear panel to disable the display, which could be handy if you don't have a partner and bought the TM-2 just for stereo sound.

The extra clock display isn't the only difference between the Nakamichi and Panasonic systems. The sub unit is included in the Panasonic system, but the Nakamichi TM-2 is sold separately from the TM-1, so some folks just have the TM-1 with no stereo sound. The Panasonic's sub unit draws power from the main unit, but the Nakamichi TM-2 has a second power cord that needs to be plugged in. The Panasonic's sub unit has four wires that plug into the main unit, but the Nakamichi TM-2 has a single multi-pin connector that plugs into the aforementioned mysterious port on the back of the TM-1. Panasonic includes a compartment to store the extra cable length of the sub unit if you don't need it, but with the Nakamichi TM-2, all that extra length just hangs out and creates a big tangling mess, as you can see in the photo up above.

Most importantly, the Nakamichi system doesn't allow you to set the speaker mode in exactly the same way as the Panasonic system. When you listen or wake up to radio, it is always played through both units in stereo. (Unfortunately, Nakamichi doesn't let you choose which unit plays the left or right channel. According to the YouTube video I embedded above, the main unit plays the left channel, which would mean it has to go on the left side of the bed.)

On the other hand, when you wake up to the buzzer alarm, alarm 1 plays through the TM-1 main unit only, and alarm 2 plays through the TM-2 Stereo Companion only, so that you and your partner can wake up separately. Neat! (When the TM-2 is not connected, both alarms sound through the TM-1.)

Nakamichi produced another set of alarm clocks, the Clock Radio 1 and Stereo Companion 1, that work similarly, but I can't find an instruction manual to draw information from, and they appear to be almost identical in functionality to the TM-1 and TM-2 anyway.

TL;DR

Stereo sound is more immersive when the left speaker is closer to your left ear, and the right speaker is closer to your right ear!

At least four alarm clocks have separate speaker units to facilitate exactly this!

The Sony ICF-IR7 jumps through wild hoops in order to connect its "remote commander" and its speaker units via infrared.

The Panasonic RC-CD600 and Nakamichi TM-1 / TM-2 let you put the speakers on nightstands on either side of your bed, allowing the systems to provide stereo sound and take the place of two different alarm clocks!

That's all!

I realize this was a very technical and very dense post, so if you made it this far, thank you for sticking with me and allowing me to introduce you to these truly one-of-a-kind clocks.

And remember, if I explained anything poorly, you can review the instruction manuals for these clocks by clicking the "Instruction Manuals" link at the top of my blog. I get all this info from the manuals anyway, so feel free to check those out!

See you soon!

Image credits:

Sangean WR-50P: Wirecutter, Sangean

Sangean website: Sangean

Sony ICF-IR7: eBay, eBay, Sony

Panasonic RC-CD600: ManualsLib, eBay, eBay, Craigslist

Nakamichi TM-1 and TM-2: eBay, eBay, eBay, eBay

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This Prospect of Video Conference Facilities within Industry

In fresh years, the approach firms conduct meetings has undergone a seismic shift. The conventional boardroom setting is gradually being changed via video convention rooms organized with today's know-how. This transformation will never be basically a style; it represents a basic trade in how we converse and collaborate throughout distances. As far off work becomes greater accepted and globally dispersed groups changed into the norm, the destiny of video conference rooms in company seems brighter than ever.

Understanding Video Conference Rooms

Video convention rooms are specialized areas designed for digital meetings, allowing contributors to attach from varied areas seamlessly. These rooms are able with more than a few video conference equipment, along with excessive-definition cameras, microphones, speakers, and collaboration resources that facilitate soft verbal exchange amongst group participants.

What Makes Up Video Conference Room Equipment?

The basic resources of video convention room machine come with:

Cameras: High-definition cameras that present transparent visuals. Microphones: High-exceptional audio trap to be certain all voices are heard. Displays: Large displays or video display units for visible presentations. Speakers: Quality sound platforms that supply transparent audio. Control Systems: User-pleasant interfaces to manipulate all kit effortlessly. The Role of Conference Room Audio Video Equipment

When settling on conference room audio video system, corporations would have to bear in mind numerous factors to ensure an high quality setup. The target is to create an immersive adventure that mimics face-to-face interactions as heavily as you'll.

Essential Features of Conference Room Video Conferencing Equipment

To maximize productivity for the duration of virtual conferences, the following good points should always be thought of as:

High-decision video quality: Essential for clear visuals. Multi-platform compatibility: Ensures connectivity with more than a few conferencing instrument. User-friendly interface: Simplifies the operation of units. Scalability: The ability to conform as trade necessities grow. The Evolution of Video Conferencing Technologies

The video conference equipment records of video conferencing dates returned quite a few decades yet has right now evolved with advancements in technologies.

Early Beginnings

Initially constrained by using bandwidth and technologies limitations, early video conferencing tactics had been cumbersome and steeply-priced. Limited accessibility hindered prominent adoption.

Technological Advancements

With the upward push of the web and enhancements in broadband speeds, video conferencing become more manageable for corporations. The creation of structures like Zoom and Microsoft Teams revolutionized how organizations approach virtual meetings.

Current Trends in Video Conferencing

Today’s video conferencing suggestions incorporate complex applied sciences corresponding to artificia

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Immersive Audio Experiences: How 3D Audio Is Changing Event Design

Introduction: Events Are No Longer Just Visual

Think back to the last big event you attended — maybe a concert, a corporate presentation, or even a museum exhibit. Chances are, the audio played a bigger role than you realized. Today, sound isn’t just about amplifying voices or music. It’s becoming a multi-dimensional experience, thanks to a technology called 3D audio.

In a world where event organizers are constantly competing to capture attention, immersive audio experiences are quickly becoming a game-changer. It’s not just about hearing sound ��� it’s about feeling like you’re inside the sound itself.

What Is 3D Audio?

At its core, 3D audio simulates how we naturally hear sound in the real world. Normally, our ears detect sound from all directions — front, back, above, below, and everywhere in between. Traditional sound systems — like stereo or surround sound — mostly project audio from just a few fixed directions (usually left and right, or front and rear).

3D audio takes it further, creating an audio bubble where sound moves around you just like it would in real life. Imagine sitting at a nature-themed event where you hear birds fluttering overhead, leaves rustling to your side, and water trickling behind you — all from carefully placed speakers. It feels natural and fully immersive.

Why Immersive Audio Matters in Event Design

In modern event design, atmosphere matters as much as content. Whether it’s a tech conference, music festival, or product launch, creating a memorable experience is the goal. Audio isn’t just about making sure people can hear — it’s about making them feel connected to the space.

3D audio helps events stand out by:

Enhancing storytelling — At an art installation or exhibit, immersive sound can pull visitors into the story, guiding them through different areas using directional audio cues.

Creating emotional impact — At concerts, sound that moves through the crowd feels way more exciting than static front-of-stage audio.

Controlling focus — In corporate presentations or educational events, speakers can direct attention to specific parts of a stage or screen by shifting audio emphasis.

Key Technologies Driving 3D Audio

1. Spatial Audio Processing

This software analyzes how sound should behave in a space, adjusting for listener position, speaker placement, and acoustics. It makes sure sounds come from the right place at the right time, even if listeners move around.

2. Object-Based Audio

Instead of mixing audio into fixed channels (like left or right speakers), object-based audio treats each sound as a separate “object” that can move independently through space. This is what allows a sound to smoothly move from one side of a room to the other.

3. Ambisonics and Binaural Audio

Ambisonics records audio in a full sphere (360 degrees) around a listener.

Binaural audio creates immersive experiences through headphones, by mimicking how human ears naturally hear sound from different directions.

How 3D Audio Is Used in Different Events

Concerts and Music Festivals

Live music feels richer when sound isn’t just blasting from the stage, but surrounding the audience. With 3D audio, instruments and vocals can move through the crowd, matching the energy and mood of the performance.

Corporate Events

At product launches or conferences, spatial audio can direct focus to key speakers or product displays, guiding the audience’s attention without the need for visual cues.

Museums and Art Installations

Art and sound installations are some of the biggest adopters of 3D audio. Imagine walking through a virtual forest, with realistic environmental sounds guiding you through different sections of an exhibit.

Theme Parks and Attractions

Attractions use spatial soundscapes to enhance rides, walkthrough experiences, and even waiting areas, helping build anticipation and immersion.

Designing Events with 3D Audio in Mind

If you’re planning an event, choosing the right audio gear matters more than ever. Not all speakers and systems can handle 3D audio, so working with professional audio shops can make sure you get equipment designed for spatial sound, along with advice on optimal placement and software.

As technology keeps evolving, the line between sound and space is disappearing. 3D audio is no longer just for VR headsets or fancy theaters — it’s becoming a core part of event design. Whether you’re organizing a concert, a corporate event, or an interactive installation, immersive audio helps create unforgettable moments that leave audiences talking long after they’ve left.

[teamvisual]

[paxtonvaldovinos]

Enhance Your Home with Lutron Smart Window Electric Shades

In the era of smart homes, window treatments have evolved far beyond traditional curtains and blinds. Lutron, a leader in smart home technology, offers a revolutionary solution with its Smart Window Electric Shades. These innovative shades combine advanced technology, elegant design, and user-friendly features to provide unparalleled convenience and comfort. In this blog, we’ll explore the benefits of Lutron Smart Window Electric Shades, how they work, and why they are a perfect addition to any modern home.

What Are Lutron Smart Window Electric Shades?

Automated window coverings, Lutron Smart Window Electric Shades, can be operated from a distance via voice commands, a tablet, or a smartphone. Thanks to the quiet and effective motors that drive these shades, smooth and accurate adjustments are possible. Lutron shades, which come in various designs, materials, and hues, may blend in with any interior design while offering practical advantages like light control, privacy, and energy efficiency.

Benefits of Lutron Smart Window Electric Shades

Convenience and Control: With Lutron Smart Window Electric Shades, you can easily control the amount of natural light entering your home. Using the Lutron app, you can raise, lower, or adjust your shades with a simple tap on your smartphone or tablet. Additionally, these shades can be integrated with voice assistants like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple HomeKit, allowing you to control them using voice commands.

Energy Efficiency: Lutron shades can significantly enhance your home’s energy efficiency. They automatically adjust based on the time of day and help regulate indoor temperatures. During the summer, the shades can be lowered to block out heat, reducing the need for air conditioning. In the winter, they can let in natural sunlight, helping warm your home and reduce heating costs.

Enhanced Privacy and Security: Lutron Smart Window Electric Shades offer increased privacy and security. You can schedule the shades to close at specific times, ensuring your home remains private, especially during the evening. Additionally, while you’re away, you can program your shades to open and close at different times to give the appearance that someone is home, deterring potential intruders.

Aesthetic Appeal: With many different materials, colors, and patterns, you may personalize these shades to complement your interior decor perfectly. Lutron offers solutions that can improve the visual appeal of any room, whether you prefer the sleek appearance of roller shades or the elegance of draperies.

Smart Integration: Lutron Smart Window Electric Shades integrate seamlessly with other smart home systems. This means you can create custom scenes that involve multiple smart devices. For example, you can create a “Movie Night” scene where the shades are lower, the lights dim, and your home theater system is turned on, all with a single command.

How Lutron Smart Window Electric Shades Work

Lutron shades operate using advanced motorized technology that ensures smooth and quiet operation. Here’s a brief overview of how they work:

Installation: Professional installation is recommended for Lutron Smart Window Electric Shades to ensure they are correctly fitted and integrated with your home’s electrical system. A certified installer will measure your windows, help you choose the right shades, and set up the system.

Control: Once installed, you can control the shades using the Lutron app, a wall-mounted keypad, or voice commands. The app allows you to set schedules, create scenes, and easily adjust individual shades or groups of shades.

Automation: Lutron shades can be programmed to operate automatically based on your preferences. You can set them to open in the morning to let in natural light and close in the evening for privacy. To maximize energy efficiency, sensors can also change the shades according to how much sunshine enters the space.

Why Choose Lutron Smart Window Electric Shades?

Lutron has pioneered smart home technology for decades and is known for its high-quality products and innovative solutions. Choosing Lutron Smart Window Electric Shades means investing in a reliable, durable, and stylish solution for your home. These shades enhance your comfort and convenience and add value to your property.

Lutron Smart Window Electric Shades are a fantastic addition to any home, offering a blend of modern technology and elegant design. With benefits ranging from improved energy efficiency to enhanced privacy and seamless integration with other smart devices, these shades provide a comprehensive solution for today’s smart home needs. Transform your home with Lutron Smart Window Electric Shades from Palm Beach Audio Visions! Experience unmatched convenience, energy efficiency, and elegant design. Control your shades with ease using your smartphone or voice commands. Schedule your consultation today and elevate your living space with cutting-edge bright window solutions!

[watthifi]

Elevate Your Audio Experience with Multi-Room Amplifiers in India

Discover the pinnacle of audio excellence with our Multi-Room Amplifiers in India. Unleash synchronized sound across your living spaces, creating a harmonious audio ambiance like never before. Elevate your home entertainment with cutting-edge technology and immerse yourself in a symphony of seamless, high-quality audio. Explore the future of multi-room amplification today.

[digitaldetoxworld]

Smart Speakers: The Evolution of Audio Technology and Home Automation

 Smart audio systems have transformed from mere audio gadgets to imperative tools inside the modern home, serving as hubs for enjoyment, productiveness, and automation. These modern devices are powered with the aid of synthetic intelligence (AI), combining voice recognition with internet connectivity to provide an unbroken person's enjoyment. This essay explores the origins, functions, programs, demanding situations, and future of clever speakers, emphasizing their growing role in improving comfort and connectivity in normal life.

Smart Speakers 

The Origins of Smart Speakers

The idea of a clever speaker began with improvements in AI and herbal language processing (NLP). The first and foremost jump came with voice assistants like Apple’s Siri in 2011, accompanied by the aid of Google Assistant, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Amazon’s Alexa. These technologies laid the foundation for voice-interactive gadgets.

In 2014, Amazon delivered the first Echo speaker, presenting Alexa as its built-in assistant. Initially, the Echo became seen as a novelty, allowing customers to invite primary questions or manage a few clever home gadgets. However, its ability to integrate with different clever gadgets quickly gained traction, and main competitors like Google and Apple developed their very own clever speaker traces.

Key Features of Smart Speakers

Voice Recognition and Assistance

Smart speakers depend upon superior microphones and NLP algorithms to system voice instructions. They can solve questions, offer weather updates, examine the information, and perform net searches.

Smart Home Integration

A cornerstone of smart speakers is their potential to govern clever home gadgets inclusive of lighting, thermostats, door locks, and protection cameras. Through structures like Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomeKit, these gadgets act as centralized controllers for a linked home.

Entertainment

From streaming song and podcasts to gambling audiobooks, clever audio systems are designed for leisure. They combine with services like Spotify, Apple Music, and Audible, delivering super sound tailored to users’ choices.

Personalization

Modern clever speakers can understand individual voices, providing customized responses, calendars, and playlists. This characteristic ensures that every person gets a custom-designed revel in.

Multi-Room Audio

Many smart speakers support multi-room audio setups, allowing users to synchronize track playback across more than one gadget in distinct rooms.

Third-Party Skills and Apps

Developers can create "talents" (Alexa) or "moves" (Google Assistant) to enlarge functionality. These range from ordering meals to playing interactive games, making the devices flexible and adaptable.

Applications of Smart Speakers

 Home Automation

Smart audio systems serve as the mind of clever houses. They connect with devices like smart bulbs, thermostats, and appliances, allowing users to govern their houses with easy voice commands. For instance, announcing, “Turn off the lights,” can extinguish lighting fixtures within the entire house.

Productivity and Time Management

Users can set reminders, alarms, and timers or control their schedules using a smart audio system. Integration with productiveness apps like Google Calendar and Microsoft To-Do allows users to stay organized.

Accessibility

For people with disabilities, clever speakers offer an available interface for controlling gadgets, gaining access to records, or communicating. Voice commands dispose of the want for physical interaction, making era more inclusive.

Education and Information

Smart audio systems act as educational gear, answering queries on numerous topics, translating languages, and even supporting math problems. They are an increasingly number of used in classrooms to guide learning.

Entertainment and Relaxation

In addition to gambling music, smart audio systems provide meditation guides, bedtime memories, and interactive games. Some models, just like the Echo Show, encompass displays for video playback and recipe tutorials.

 Shopping and E-commerce

Users could make purchases through clever speakers, check product availability, or order groceries. Integration with platforms like Amazon permits voice-based total buying studies.

Challenges and Concerns

Despite their several advantages, smart audio systems face demanding situations, specifically around privateness, protection, and consumer acceptance as true with.

 Privacy Issues

Smart audio systems are continually listening for wake phrases like "Alexa" or "Hey Google," elevating issues about information collection and inadvertent recordings. Users often worry approximately how their voice facts are saved and utilized by organizations.

Security Vulnerabilities

Being connected to the net makes smart speakers prone to hacking. Cybersecurity professionals have proven how vulnerabilities in these devices can expose touchy information or furnish unauthorized access to smart domestic structures.

 Misunderstandings and Errors

Voice reputation era, though superior, is not foolproof. Misinterpretation of instructions can lead to accidental movements, irritating users.

Digital Dependency

Overreliance on smart audio systems might also make contribution to a decline in important thinking or the ability to carry out obligations without technological help.

 Compatibility Issues

Not all smart domestic devices are compatible with every smart speaker. This fragmentation can be complicated for consumers looking to build cohesive smart ecosystems.

The Future of Smart Speakers

The destiny of smart speakers lies in more integration, improved AI skills, and stepped forward privateness measures. Key trends shaping their development include:

 Advanced AI and Machine Learning

As AI evolves, clever speakers turn into extra intuitive, able to information context and nuanced language. This will permit extra herbal conversations and smarter interactions.

Seamless Integration with IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to grow exponentially, and smart audio systems will play a central role in managing interconnected devices. Enhanced interoperability standards like Matter aim to make smart home ecosystems more cohesive.

 Enhanced Privacy Features

Future models may additionally encompass on-tool processing, where commands are handled regionally instead of inside the cloud, lowering privateness issues. Companies are also likely to introduce policies that are more transparent regarding records.

Expanded Accessibility

Smart audio systems will continue to cater to diverse populations, with functions like multilingual aid, visible aids for the hearing-impaired, and tactile interfaces for people with constrained mobility.

 Immersive Audio Experiences

Advancements in the audio era will make clever audio systems capable of turning in excessive-constancy, 3-D soundscapes, enhancing their role as enjoyment hubs.

Sustainability

With developing environmental attention, manufacturers are focusing on the usage of sustainable materials and strength-efficient additives in clever audio systems.

[gproduction]

AV Installation Secrets Revealed: Expert Insights and Advice

Whether you're setting up a home theater, upgrading a conference room, or creating an immersive stage experience, AV installations are essential in transforming ordinary spaces into dynamic, impactful environments. In today's tech-driven world, AV Installation Services have become a staple for events, corporate gatherings, and personal spaces alike. However, creating a seamless audio-visual experience involves more than just wiring up speakers and mounting screens. Here, we’ll share expert insights into AV installation secrets that elevate quality, enhance ambiance, and guarantee a hassle-free experience.

1. Planning the Right Setup for Your Space

A successful AV installation starts with a clear understanding of your specific needs and goals. No two spaces are alike, so the initial planning phase should involve evaluating the room layout, dimensions, and acoustics. This is where a professional AV Installation Service can make all the difference by creating a custom setup that maximizes audio and visual quality. Experts can help design an installation plan that works within your budget while enhancing every aspect of the viewing and listening experience.

2. Investing in High-Quality Equipment

The equipment you select is the foundation of any AV installation. From high-resolution projectors and screens to powerful, crisp sound systems, investing in quality components ensures a longer lifespan and better performance. Professional AV Installation Services have access to the latest in AV technology, helping you choose the right gear for your setup. High-definition displays, multi-channel audio systems, and smart control systems are all important elements that bring your vision to life.

3. Understanding Acoustic Treatments and Speaker Placement

Optimal sound distribution is crucial for an immersive experience. AV installation experts know that sound quality is influenced by room acoustics, materials, and furniture. They employ techniques like acoustic panels, bass traps, and strategic speaker placement to eliminate echo and balance sound. With the help of an AV Installation Service, you can avoid common issues like uneven sound and muffled audio, ensuring clear, high-quality sound throughout the room.

4. Hiding the Cables and Wiring

One of the biggest challenges in AV installation is concealing the maze of cables and wires. A messy installation can detract from the space's aesthetics and even cause safety hazards. An expert AV Installation Service will know how to manage and conceal wires effectively, either by routing them through walls, floors, or custom cabinetry. They’ll also label everything clearly, making it easier to troubleshoot or upgrade your system later on.

5. Automating the AV Experience

A well-designed AV system should also offer ease of use. Automated systems allow you to control lighting, sound, and visuals at the touch of a button, creating a seamless experience. Leading AV Installation Services can integrate smart controls like voice activation, mobile app interfaces, and remote controls, allowing you to customize the atmosphere with minimal effort. Imagine dimming the lights, adjusting the sound, or switching screens from your phone, adding that wow factor to any event or space.

6. Testing and Calibration for Optimal Performance

Once the setup is complete, professional AV installers will conduct thorough testing and calibration. This step ensures that all components work together harmoniously, providing an optimized performance for both audio and video. AV Installation Services use specialized equipment to test sound quality, brightness, and display alignment, making any necessary adjustments for the perfect final setup.

7. Ongoing Support and Maintenance

AV systems are complex and, over time, may require software updates, recalibration, or even repairs. The right AV Installation Service provides ongoing support, ensuring that your system remains in top condition. Regular maintenance not only extends the equipment’s lifespan but also keeps your AV experience flawless, even as your needs evolve or technology advances.

8. Expert Advice for DIY AV Enthusiasts

For those looking to try AV installation on their own, there are a few essential tips to keep in mind. First, start small, with easy-to-manage components like a soundbar and projector. Researching the best products and ensuring compatibility among devices is key. Also, remember to position speakers at ear level and place screens to minimize glare. However, for larger spaces and complex requirements, it’s always best to consult a professional AV Installation Service for expert guidance and support.

Conclusion: Why G Productions is Your Top Choice for AV Installation Services

Mastering AV installation is a craft that requires expertise, high-quality equipment, and a deep understanding of spatial dynamics. G Productions has set the benchmark as India’s best event management company, providing premium AV Installation Services tailored to the unique demands of each project. Whether for a corporate event, wedding, or personal entertainment setup, G Productions ensures that every AV installation is performed with precision and dedication. Choose G Productions, and experience a world-class audiovisual setup that transforms any environment into an immersive experience, reinforcing our commitment to excellence in event management company across India.

[audio-luddite]

You cant fix a recording in your system.

It is obvious that once a recording is published it is fixed. Analog or digital makes no difference once it reaches your system it is what it is. If it is flawed there is little to do. Oh you can use a multiband equalizer (shudder) or a dynamic range expander (for some recordings) but that is a bandage on a broken thing. It will not fix the stereo image if it is not there.

I tripped over a nugget of information at the online TAS blog. My attention was snagged by yet another half million dollar speaker then diverted by this other thing.

I played the two tracks, A & B, as instructed and quickly chose B as preferred. It was recorded with a single stereo microphone. If you read all the blah blah on either side of the demo you get the idea.

I listened with cheap earbuds plugged into my computer. It was a very noticeable effect.

Single mike recordings are rare as it is easier to do multi mikes into huge mixing boards so things can be tracked and mixed. Faster, easier to fix mistakes and all that.

Audiophiles will spend big money and judge the quality of their system on its ability to produce a good image. This small nugget shows the basic image quality is not in the playing, but in the recording.

As an aside the funky speaker in the photo is a Linkwitz open baffle behemoth that sprays sound all over the room front and back to artificially create ambience and presumably image. I think the concept is deeply flawed.

So what does this mean? Two very good examples of single mike recordings are Trinity Sessions by Cowboy Junkies, and Jazz at the Pawn Shop (sort of). Pawnshop was recorded with several mikes but they were arrayed as ORTF pairs which are two close set angled outward and each pair is lets say a quasi-single mike. Trinity was recorded with an Ambisonic mike that has 4 cartridges arrayed in a tetrahedron. The example B was done with a Blumlein stereo mike with two cartridges at 90 degrees to each other in one case. The main thing is the actual space and phase information that captures the "image" are preserved with a singe mike. That is why they sound so good.

One is a legendary pure analog recording the other is pure digital.

The brilliant Mercury Living Presence recordings are not single mike, but otherwise minimalist with just three mikes, L, R, and Center.

It is possible in the mix and processing to fake image. Those Supertramp albums have cool effects like a saxophone moving from the back to front and left and right. But that is all studio magic.

Qsound and Dolby Atmos create effects to mimic a sound stage. There are other methods that in your system feed out of phase information through each stereo speaker to cancel out some sounds from the other side and create a virtual headphone effect. These are all fake and frankly work only for a limited listening position. Headphones work too.

This resolves down to getting recordings that are done certain ways to get a good honest image. You may like a given musical performance but the image can be real or fake. An example of a good fake recording is "Diana Krall in Paris." Listen to how the image is portrayed in the mix then look at the photo of the band on stage.

Oh another anti-example is Getz / Gilberto. Very Naive recording some studio ambiance, but Astrud's vocal is hard to one side. Weird, but that is the way it was made. Actually not stereo. I think the original release was monophonic and Stereo was so new.

Fool me once shame on me.