Most people listened to music. They streamed low-bitrate MP3s that stripped the soul out of the cymbal crashes and the bass drops. But Julian was a purist. He listened to the world in Free Lossless Audio Codec. He heard the breath between the controller's words in Tokyo; he heard the static crackle of a storm front over the Atlantic in perfect, crystal-clear fidelity.

listening experience, downloading the FLAC file and using a mobile player that supports lossless audio (like VLC or Poweramp) will give you the best sound quality on the go. or the original radio edit to add to your portable library?

Julian smiled. The "G'day" pinged through the headphones with such clarity he could hear the smile in the pilot's voice. The static was different here—thinner, somehow. The vast, empty expanse of the Pacific stretched out in the silence between transmissions.