Category: Entertainment

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Science Finally Explains Why Some Songs Give You Chills

I was just listening to Only Music Survives and all of a sudden I was tingling with the familiar—and delightful—chills whenever I hear this song (even though I’ve known of it only a month or so). I was already on the computer, so I asked “Why do certain songs give us chills?”

Your favorite songs and audio gear are scientifically engineered to give you goosebumps.

The chills and goosebumps you get from music, known as frisson, connect directly to how our brains process sound. But it’s not just about the feels. This response also drives many choices in audio equipment design and music production.

Learning about frisson’s scientific basis helps explain why certain audio qualities matter and how they affect our listening experience.

The Science of Frisson

Frisson is like your brain throwing a tiny celebration. It’s deeply tied to the reward system, where several interconnected regions team up to create an emotional and physical response.

When you listen to a piece of music that hits just right, your brain releases dopamine, A.K.A. the “feel-good” neurotransmitter, in two stages: the build-up as you anticipate the peak and the reward when it finally arrives.

A few key players in your brain make this magic happen:

  • Auditory cortex: The analyst that processes the structure and sound of the music.
  • Anterior insula: The amplifier that links what you’re hearing to emotional reactions and those spine-tingling chills.
  • Medial prefrontal cortex: The sentimentalist that ties the music to your memories and giving it emotional weight.

A study by USC PhD student Matthew Sachs suggests that some people are practically wired for frisson.

Stronger neural connections between the auditory cortex and emotional centers make them more attuned to the emotional triggers in music. If a particular song gives you chills every time, there’s a good chance your brain is set up for this kind of emotional sensitivity.

Your personality also plays a part.

If you’re someone who scores high in “openness to experience” (the kind of person who loves diving into creative projects or gets lost in a book) you’re more likely to feel these intense moments of frisson.

However, the music itself does plenty of the heavy lifting. Certain elements seem tailor-made to stir something inside us.

]The drums kicking in during Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight,” or the way Adele’s voice soars in “Someone Like You” aren’t accidents. They’re carefully crafted emotional triggers.

Layer in rich harmonies and unexpected chord changes (like the ones that make Radiohead’s “Exit Music” so haunting), and you’ve got a recipe for full-body chills.

There’s also a fascinating evolutionary layer to this.

These music-induced chills actually hijack your body’s ancient alarm system.

The goosebumps from your favorite song share the same neural pathway as your ancestors’ response to danger signals like a twig snapping in the dark. But, music has transformed this survival response into something beautiful

Sure, a painting or poem might move you, but music seems uniquely gifted at pulling the strings on this physiological reaction.

Frisson and the Audiophile Experience

‘Frisson’ is like your brain throwing a tiny celebration—it’s deeply tied to the reward system. (From: Pexels)

Audiophiles spend thousands on high-end audio gear for one simple reason: to experience music at its fullest.

That’s why, audiophile-grade systems focus on revealing layers of music that standard setups simply can’t touch

Three key elements make these emotional peaks possible:

  • Detail retrieval: When Diana Krall’s piano notes decay into silence, you’ll hear the gentle mechanical sounds of the hammers falling back into place. Leonard Cohen’s gravelly whispers carry the weight of every cigarette he ever smoked. High-end gear brings these intimate details to life.
  • Soundstage and imaging: Quality gear helps you hear where each instrument or voice is positioned in space. In orchestral pieces, for example, you can tell exactly where different sections are placed. For intimate jazz recordings, you feel like you’re sitting in the studio with the musicians.
  • Dynamic range: From the quietest whisper to the loudest sounds, better equipment maintains the natural contrast in volume that makes music exciting. A soft acoustic guitar passage comes through clearly, while a full rock band chorus hits with proper impact.

To really unlock these moments, formats, mastering, and the gear matter. These are all things audiophiles are looking for, whether they’re aware of it or not.

Why Frisson Is Central to Audiophile Sound Design

Sound designers and music producers work behind the scenes to create those goosebump moments in your favorite songs and movies. By leaning on psychoacoustic principles, they create experiences that connect on a deeper level, where sound isn’t just heard but felt.

To pull this off, they rely on a few key tricks of the trade:

  • Dynamic contrast: This refers to those slow builds that explode into a climactic drop, or the sudden silence that pulls you to the edge of your seat.
Watch how James Blake’s “Retrograde” starts with a gentle hum before exploding into synthesizer waves. Or notice how Massive Attack’s “Angel” builds tension for almost two minutes before dropping into that legendary bass line. These aren’t random choices but carefully engineered emotional triggers.
  • Spatial effects: Modern recording techniques place sounds exactly where they’ll hit hardest. For example, Hans Zimmer’s Dune soundtrack uses Dolby Atmos to wrap the sound around you, making those massive sandworms feel terrifyingly real.
  • Harmonic layering: Listen to Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song” on quality headphones. Each new element (piano, strings, drums) adds another emotional layer. By the end, these separate pieces create something bigger than their parts.

For audiophiles, frisson serves as a real benchmark for testing equipment. When a pair of headphones or speakers can make the hair on your arms stand up, you know they’re doing something right.

Getting this reaction means the gear handles all the technical stuff well, like dynamic range and detail. But more importantly, it means the emotional core of the music comes through intact.

Film sound designers use these same principles to enhance emotional impact. For example, horror movies use subtle frequency shifts to make you uncomfortable without knowing why.

This marriage of technical precision and emotional impact drives the whole audiophile experience. It’s why we spend hours tweaking equipment settings and comparing different recordings of the same piece.

We’re not just chasing perfect sound. We’re chasing those moments when the music bypasses our analytical brain and goes straight for the heart.

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Did I Say Eight Was Enough? I Meant…Nine, Er…Ten Was Enough

You may have noticed that sapphire blue beauty in the top row in some of my recent posts.

It’s a Sony D-EJ985. While not from the last model year Sony made portable CD players or even the newest in my collection, it (along with the D-EJ915) are my favorites and is one of their best IMHO.

You’ll also notice another D-EJ985 in silver at the lower right corner. That one appeared on my eBay feed first, and was advertised as “Untested. Comes with charging stand, but power cord is frayed and I have no gumstick batteries to test functionality.” It was ridiculously cheap, looked to be in excellent cosmetic condition, and since I’d been wanting this particular model for a while and the 985s are usually way out of my price range, I jumped on it. I figured I could always send it off to “my guy” Shawn for repairs if it wasn’t working.

Of course, as is often the case, within a day of sending payment, the much more desirable blue one appeared. That color! Yowsah! I had to get it. (It was also manufactured in a plum/maroon color.) Despite my rather monotone existence, I do enjoy splashes of color.

It was selling for about $20 more than the silver model, but the seller evidently didn’t do his homework prior to putting it up, because I got this one well, well below what a fully functional, “tested” unit typically goes for.

Turns out they both work beautifully. I have Sony power bricks that work with them just fine and I’ve even got an inline remote that came with one of my MD players that is essentially the same thing that originally shipped with the 985s.

I certainly don’t need two of the same model in my collection (even if they’re different colors) so I’ll be eBaying the silver one this weekend.

 

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Morning Tunes

Hott City – Ain’t Love Grand (1979)

This album—although never a commercial success (and as far as I know, the group’s only release)—holds a very special place in my heart. One of the few pieces of vinyl to survive my expensively-stupid great purge in the late 80s, I still have the original white vinyl copy that Steve Golden gave me all those many, many years ago.

Needless to say, it was quite a treat to stumble across the CD in 2024.

Don’t judge me.

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Almost every time I post one of Sony’s early Walkman models, someone asks why the company cannot simply bring them back. I understand why. There are stories almost every week announcing that cassettes and CDs are back, and several manufacturers now sell new players for both formats. From the outside, it can look as though Sony only needs to choose one, update a few things, and put it back into production.

Akira Tanaka, who spent years designing Walkman at Sony, says it would be much closer to starting over.

Tanaka is a former Sony mechanical engineer whose published project list spans four types of Walkman: five cassette models, eight CD models, two MiniDisc models, and ten generations of file-based players. He was project manager for the camera-equipped MZ-DH10Pand the MZ-RH1, Sony’s final Hi-MD Walkman. He later served as mechanical engineering manager for several digital Walkman generations, including the A820 and X1000 series.

He remained at Sony until taking early retirement in February 2025. Today, he owns more than 70 Walkman products and 279 catalogs, and he writes about the machines he helped create almost every day.

Tanaka is probably my favorite person to follow online. I eagerly wait for anything he has to say about Walkman history because nobody else has his combination of firsthand experience, technical knowledge, and personal archive. He has answered my questions, looked at my work, and helped me with the Obsolete Sony archive. I think of him as my Walkman senpai, and I am still slightly amazed that I get to talk with someone who helped make the products I spend so much time documenting.

In a recent post, Tanaka gave six reasons Sony would have difficulty reissuing its cassette, CD, or MiniDisc Walkman models. His explanation reveals how much of the world that produced the Walkman has disappeared.

1. The Parts No Longer Exist

The miniature motors, magnetic heads, optical pickups, and proprietary integrated circuits used by these players have gone out of production. Sony cannot pull an old bill of materials from its files and order everything again. Suppliers moved on, production equipment was retired, and some companies may no longer be in those businesses. A working WM-EX2000 can make this difficult to believe, but any drawings still held by Sony describe components that nobody manufactures today.

Replacements could be designed, but nearly everything around them would need to change. A new cassette Walkman would need a transport, motor, head, control system, power supply, tooling, and housing built around components available now. A CD Walkman would need a new optical assembly and disc mechanism. A MiniDisc player would add a magnetic recording head, signal processing, and software. Sony can do all of this, but each format would require a new development program.

2. The Manufacturing Technology Has Been Lost

Later Walkman models were extremely small, thin, and precise. Sony reached those dimensions by designing each part around the others. Motors became flatter, circuit boards wrapped around moving assemblies, clearances almost disappeared, and the exterior casing sometimes became part of the structure.

That work depended on dedicated production lines and adjustment procedures. Drawings can record dimensions and tolerances, but they do not always record how a line was tuned after the first few thousand units, which jig solved an alignment problem, or which adjustment stopped a mechanism from wearing too quickly. Much of that knowledge stayed with the engineers and factory workers who used it.

This is why a new cassette player can be larger and mechanically worse than a Walkman sold more than 30 years ago. The factories making portable cassette mechanisms today are serving a small, inexpensive market. During the Walkman’s peak, shaving another millimeter from the body could justify a new motor and new tooling. That level of spending ended with the mass market.

3. The Economics Do Not Work

Plenty of people say they want a new cassette or MiniDisc Walkman, but the total market is still small. Collectors and physical-media fans are active online, which can make demand look larger than it is.

According to Tanaka, even sales in the tens of thousands might not recover the development and tooling costs. Low production volume would also raise the price of every specialized component. By the time Sony covered manufacturing, warranty service, and support, the player would be far more expensive than the simple reissue many fans have in mind.

4. MiniDisc Media Is Disappearing

CDs are still widely available, and cassettes continue to be manufactured in smaller quantities. MiniDisc is different. In January 2025, Sony announced that it would end production of all recordable MiniDisc media the following month, along with MD Data discs, MiniDV cassettes, and recordable Blu-ray media. Sony also said there would be no successor products.

A new MD Walkman would arrive after Sony stopped making blank discs for it. Used and unopened media will remain available for years, but the supply can only decline. Relaunching the hardware would make little sense unless Sony also restarted the media.

5. Development Resources Are Limited

Sony still develops Walkman. They are Android-based Hi-Res players built for local files and streaming, and that is where Tanaka believes the company can realistically concentrate its limited engineering staff and development budget. These players may have little in common with a cassette Walkman beyond the name and the fact that both play music through headphones. Sony chose to continue Walkman as a digital audio category and retire the cassette, CD, and MiniDisc mechanisms.

6. Tanaka Is No Longer at Sony

Tanaka makes his own departure the sixth reason. His joke points to another loss: Sony still has drawings, reports, patents, and test data, but it no longer has every engineer who remembers why a part was changed, which prototype failed, or how a production problem was fixed.

Some of that knowledge was passed to younger engineers, as Sony’s interview with Tanaka about the NW-X1000 shows. Once Sony stopped making mechanical Walkman models, however, there was no reason to keep passing along every detail of how to manufacture one.

Most of Tanaka’s six reasons are easy enough to guess. I still found it special to hear them from him. Sony has always been a company in motion. It launches the next thing and rarely explains why the old one can no longer be made. The Walkman moved from cassette to CD, MiniDisc, flash memory, and eventually Android, while the people, suppliers, tools, and knowledge behind each generation scattered.

Tanaka was close enough to this history to know what disappeared along the way. Sony will probably never publish a formal explanation of why those old Walkman models cannot come back. His post may be the closest answer we will ever get.

Make sure to follow Akira Tanaka on X, where he continues to share firsthand stories from Sony’s portable audio history.

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Morning Coffee With Ella

Ella Fitzgerald – Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Songbook (1997 reissue)

I know I’ve featured this album before in another context, but fuck it. This is my blog and I’ll do what I want.

Love is Love and all that, indeed, but so many of Cole Porter’s songs take on an additional, personal—color—when you consider he was a gay man who—if only subconsciously—wrote these songs as if they were being sung to another man.

He lived a very interesting life.

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Saturday Evening Soundtrack

Miles Davis – Bitches Brew (1970)

I love Miles Davis, but I’m still trying very hard to like and appreciate this one. I put on Miles to relax, and Bitches Brew is anything but relaxing.

I have several suggestions both from here and Reddit on which way to go from here in regard to exploring the Miles Davis catalog, but it seems my CD budget is always getting pulled in some other direction. (Most recently I have the soundtrack to Sweet Charity on order.)

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