Nosebleed's Guide to Ero Audio

[Nosebleed]

I pondered for a while whether or not I should make this, but I figured it can't hurt that much, right? Hopefully some people will find it useful and maybe others will discover a new medium they never thought they'd enjoy before.

Let's start with the basics then: What is audio porn? 

As the name implies, it's audio-only pornography. No images, no videos, just sound.

Isn't that for visually impaired people? How does this work for me?

This is for anyone who enjoys stimulation through audio, not just people who can't use their sight.
Sounds can cause all kinds of reactions in a person, and some of those reactions can be a state of arousal. You might be familiar with ASMR, which are audio tracks with all sorts of different sounds meant to trigger certain physical responses in your body that help you relax. Audio porn follows a similar principle, except the intention here is to get your nether region worked up.

It sounds really boring though, what does this type of porn provide?

Audio has one advantage over other erotic mediums given that it's not bound by visuals. What I mean by that is everything plays out in your head, not in front of your eyes.
With anime, manga or visual novels you see the events unfold in front of you and you watch them, but with audio by itself you can get your imagination working and make the track adapt to your tastes much better.
Think of it like when you read a book and all sorts of settings pop up in your mind, that's what audio does in this case too.

Isn't it the same as just listening to some H-scene in a VN?

On the contrary, it's everything but that.
Audio porn (at least the good tracks) utilizes techniques to enhance the listening experience for you so it doesn't feel like you're listening to someone else having sex but rather that someone is actually there with you and you're being affected by their actions. You can have tracks that really know how to mix the audio to make a realistic surrounding effect, giving you the idea that the person in the track is closing in or getting further away from you, among other things, and that's the type of stimulation audio porn seeks to achieve.
Visual novels and anime aren't designed to be listened to in great detail, they're meant to be watched, and because of that they're not very catered to your ears.
But audio porn is hand crafted to be a one of a kind experience for your ears to savour.

Okay, I guess I could give it a try, where do I start?

Well I'm glad you asked!

First off let me get this out of the way really quickly: I will only be dealing with Japanese audio tracks.
Because everything in Japanese, there's two major implications when it comes to erotic audio: You need to have at least a vague knowledge of basic hentai vocabulary. Without any prior Japanese knowledge, it's unlikely you'll be able to enjoy most audio works with any form of dialogue. HOWEVER there are audio works that primarly feature sound effects rather than dialogue, so you can probably still enjoy those, you'll just need to be on the lookout for which is what.

Let's start with the best place to find this type of content, and the one I personally rely on: http://www.dlsite.com/

Why dlsite? Well first off it's the place where all the main doujin circles go to to sell their amateur works digitally, and also because it's really foreigner friendly, seeing as they even have an English version of the site where you can buy this stuff too, and yes, the prices are the same on both.

For the purposes of this guide though I will strictly be using the Japanese version of dlsite. The reason is simple, the Japanese version of dlsite is the most complete version that has all the available products. Some circles don't make certain products available on the English site, either because they don't want to or because they forget that it exists (it's often the latter).

When it comes to voice works, from my experience, the vast majority (over 90%) of the audio tracks available on the JP store are also available on the ENG store, so it shouldn't really be a problem regardless of which one you choose to go for.

Basic searching
 

When you go on dlsite.com you want to hit 同人作品 (Doujin works) on either the pink column on the purple column as those are the two sections where you'll find most of these things.
The pink side is for a male audience and mostly features works with female voice acting.
The purple side is for a female audience and mostly features works with male voice acting.
If you're curious on the rest, the green side is for all ages products and the light blue side is for a gay male audience.
The red side will take you to the English versions of each store (the adult store includes all adult products both for males and females)

I don't want to make separate sections for each since they all work the same way so for the purpose of the guide I'll consider we picked the male side.

So the first thing you want to do is click on 検索 (search). Yes, you technically didn't type anything in the search bar, but that's okay, so long as this is what shows up after:

Spoiler

In order to filter things out, you have to click on 検索条件を変更する (change search criteria) on the bottom right corner of the search bar.

Scroll down and click on the 作品形式 (Work type) tab as seen here and once it opens you can to select 音声作品 (Voice works), this will bring up every product that is voiced. However, some applications and other things like PDFs might pop up, so we want to filter those out since we're only looking for audio tracks.

On the same page, scroll down to the ファイル形式 (File type) section, right here.
Once you open that, scroll down to the オーディオファイル (Audio files) category as seen here. I just select the whole tab by checking the box next side the tab name,  this will make it so that your search only shows products that are strictly based around audio. However, if you want specify formats like MP3, you can also pick the files you want from the list.

Once you're done with these steps, just scroll down to the big orange box that says 検索 (Search).

The final result should be a search bar that looks like this:

Spoiler

Now if you want you can stop here and just go on your merry way to browse all the voice works available from most recent to oldest.
You can also organize the results by the following criteria if you open that scroll down menu:

• 発売日が新しい順 (Newest)
• 発売日が古い順 (Oldest)
• DL数が多い順 (Most downloads)
• 価格が安い順 (Cheapest)
• 価格が高い順 (Priciest)
• 評価が高い順 (Most positive ratings)
• レビューが多い順 (Most reviews)

Not very hard now is it?

Stuff to pay attention to before you buy anything

Now let's imagine you found one that seems interesting. When you open the product page, here's the things you want to be on the lookout for first and foremost:

• Genre (ジャンル)

This is where all the main themes of the product will be listed. I'm not going to translate all of them, but if you don't know Japanese, you can easily put them on Google TL as they're usually just one common word. For example, this is where you'd find stuff like "incest" or "blowjob", if the track had those things.

• Sample clip

Not all products will have this option, by the way, but a lot of them have a preview box at the top of the description that lets you play a small clip to see if you like it. I strongly advise you to do so before spending your money as you may end up regretting it if you don't like how it sounds later on.

• Audio quality

When you listen to the sample clip, check if there's background noises, if they properly utilize the left and right channels, if there's voice distortion, etc.
Basically look for stuff that doesn't sound like it was recorded with a cucumber inside an elevator.

The best tracks will have very little background noise even when the person recording is completely silent and they'll give you a good illusion that they're actually moving around you or are getting close to you. The bad tracks feel like you're listening to a drama CD and not to a person sitting next to you, they generally just use surround sound for the whole thing and it's not that pleasant to listen to.

• Length

Almost every single product has its length listed in the description, what varies is how they display it. They either do it track by track or have the full length of all tracks combined.
If you can't read Japanese, again Google TL should suffice to help, just look at the last track on the list and see if it's just the title of the track or if it says something like "total amount".

Examples:

Spoiler

In this case the creator only lists all the tracks in this work. All of the names before the time stamps are track titles, which means the total length is all those values combined.

Spoiler

In this second case all the tracks are still listed but on the bottom you see 合計 (Total amount) which is all of the previous time stamps added up.

The time stamps might show up in Japanese format. If they do, just know that 時 is hour 分 is minutes and 秒 is seconds. In the above example the total is 58 minutes and 29 seconds.

Lastly, still regarding the length, check each individual track's title, which usually will describe what the track is, and then see how long it is. This way you can know how much time the product will spend on each thing and you can look for stuff that spend more time on the stuff you want.

And of course it's ultimately important to know the length because you want to know if the money is worth that amount of time.

• Specs

As with anything you buy, always check the specs at the bottom. Of course, since these are audio files, you don't really have "specs", but it's still worthy to scroll down and see what the hell you're actually downloading.

• Voice actors

Every single product lists down the voice actors that worked on it. It's useful to know because a lot of these people are freelancers who do commission based work  so they're not bound to one specific company/circlle. And if you know their names you can search for other products voiced by them, in case you really enjoyed someone's voice. 
The voice actor is almost always listed in the description after the letters CV. You can just copy their name into the search bar and it'll look up works where their name appears in the description.

• Circles and Series

Of course if you end up loving a track you will likely want something similar to it again, this is when looking up the circle or the series the track belongs to is helpful.
On the product's page, the circle is listed after サークル名 (Circle name)  and the series is listed after シリーズ名 (Series name).
The circle is the group of people (or the person, in case of a solo circle) who made the product, so if you click on it you'll be looking at other works they've made.
The series usually includes other works of similar nature, or even sequels/prequels to a certain product.

Searching for your fetishes

So we now know how to look up voice works on dlsite pretty effectively, but the reason we're here for is to listen to those fetishes we're really into isn't it?
Well fear not because searching for your fetishes is easy peasy, you just need to specify the search filters a bit more.

Once again click on 検索条件を変更する (change search criteria), and after making sure you have the audio options selected, you want to go to the 趣味嗜好 (Preferences) tab, and here you'll find all the tags available on dlsite to filter your search with.

You have 2 first options:

•  いずれかを含 (Look for products that contains at least one of the selected tag)
•  全てを含む (Look for products that contain all selected tags)

I wouldn't recommend using the "look for products with all these tags" option though because sometimes the creators forget to list down some really specific stuff and then it might get filtered out despite having that kind of stuff in it. Although generally speaking, if you use the more broad tags, which in time you'll notice there's a lot of common ones, you should have no problem since they're widely used.

Then you have the tags themselves. I'm obviously not going to translate all of them and I would hope that you can use google translate if you really can't read any of it. I don't suggest using the English dlsite store for comparing the filters because some of them are not in the same order.

However I'll translate the main categories if that'll help:

• こだわり/アピール (Focus/Appeal) - Basically the really generic themes, I don't suggest using these
• アイテム/道具 (Items/tools) - Stuff like glasses and sex toys
• キャラクター (Character) - Everything related to the characters themselves, these are the filters you're likely going to want
• コスチューム/衣装/職業 (Outfits/Occupations) - Mainly relevant for visual works, not for voice works
• シチュエーション/系統 (Situations) - Basically the setting of the plot, possibly not too relevant
• プレイ/えっち傾向 (Type of sexual play) - Again one you'll likely want to use.
• 外見/身体的特徴 (Outter appearance/Body features) - Not really relevant for voice works either
• 残酷系/異常系 (Brutality/Weirdness) - This is for the fucked up shit like ryona and guro, again not relevant for voice works

Usually voice works use character and sexual play tags so I recommend focusing on those.

One last tip!

As I mentioned earlier, a pretty decent amount of the releases on dlsite JP are available on the ENG version of the site as well and there's actually a really easy way to check if the product you want is available on the English vesion.

 

Open a product on the JP site and go to the URL which should end with RJ and then some numbers. Simply change RJ to RE (J is for Japanese and E is for English) and go to that URL. If there's a page for it on the English version of the site, it will immediately show up with everything translated (albeit poorly translated but what can you do), this should help you with some of the earlier steps like trying to translate tags and descriptions.

 

Example:

Spoiler

 

 

Turns into

 

 

How to make the best use out of your tracks.

If you have half a brain I'm sure you know how to listen to music on your devices, so this isn't much different. However, there are always a couple things you can do to enhance your experience.

It's important to note that each person has their own way of dealing with this stuff so take everything below with a grain of salt and do what you think feels best!

• Make sure you're alone. I shouldn't have to tell you, but even if it's audio-only, this is porn.
• Wear headphones with good isolation. The less real life noises you hear, the better your immersion will be.
• Close your eyes. This is an audio-only medium, there's no need to have your eyes open as it can be distracting.
• Turn the lights off. While closing your eyes help, being in complete darkness increases the experience even more.
• Don't skip around. Be patient and don't skip the track, it will just break the immersion and the narrative.
• Follow the story. I'm not going to teach you how to masturbate, but I'm just telling you things feel way better if you go at the story's pace.

Fun fact: listening to some longer tracks where the girl in the story makes the protagonist (you) climax multiple times has taught me about my refractory period pretty well. If you're a guy, this is not a bad way to find how long will it take for you to get back in it again, if you find that kind of information useful at all.

If you take too long to do it a 2nd time, I suggest always waiting until the last bits of the track to actually finish. There's usually pretty good verbal indicators that the scene is about to reach it's climax, so make the best use out of that.

Wasn't this just a guide on how to use dlsite?

I'm sure you've realized most of this post was on how to properly use dlsite's features, but there's actually a very good reason for that, and that is dlsite is the only site where you'll be able to search for voice works accurately.

What I mean by this is that even if I wanted to Google things just to pirate tracks I want, without dlsite I wouldn't be able to know what the track is even about, let alone search for things with my fetishes. Dlsite exponentially opens the doors for you with tons of tags and products to look through and that's something you will never get anywhere else, so that's why it's so important to learn how to use it if you want to get into the medium.

As a closing thought, I don't want to lecture people on the morals of piracy, but I'd like to point out that all these things are self published works produced by small doujin circles that do all the recording, mixing, funding, etc. by themselves. Most tracks (including good ones) will cost you about 6 bucks and even the longest, most well produced ones will probably only be around 10 bucks, so there's really no reason not to support these people when they're making their work and talent available for such a low price tag. I can't count how many great freelance voice actresses I've managed to find through this medium and buying the works they make and be able to support further tracks makes me feel like I did something to help the world.

AND THAT'S ALL!

This ended up being a fairly wordy post but honestly, it's really not that hard to look this stuff up once you learn how everything works, I just thought I'd explain literally everything there is to possibly know in case someone who's never used dlsite reads this.

I hope this brings a new medium to some people who might enjoy it.

 

And even if this post ends up buried and nobody cares about it, at the very least I can feel proud of myself for having written something this big.

Tfw your longest post in ages is about audio erotica.

Have fun with your faps, Onii-chan.

 

Time to go to bed now and re-think my life.

[Nebjula]

Nicely written, I'm sure it'll come in handy for some people.

Quick question: How long did this take you to write and do you regret it?

[Nosebleed]

1 minute ago, Nebjula said:

Quick question: How long did this take you to write and do you regret it?

Roughly 2 hours.

Yes kinda maybe a little why do I do this to myself I want to die Not at all.

[Nebjula]

52 minutes ago, Nosebleed said:

Roughly 2 hours

Yes kinda maybe a little why do I do this to myself I want to die Not at all.

Nice to see someone with the willpower to write an entire article about a fetish. You truly are a fuwan legend.

Hope to see you write more of this in the future.

[Nosebleed]

There's probably a whole lotta stuff I forgot to add, but I'm too tired to think of it.

My goal with this post was to open people up to erotic voice works, because there's some really good quality stuff out there that often goes unnoticed. I seriously fell in love with some of the voice acting in some of the tracks I've listened to, so I wanted to try and get more people to feel the same way or at the very least try something new and unusual.

[Orcka]

Thx Oni-Chan, didn't think you would make an entire new thread just to answer my question:

 

 

[OriginalRen]

I love how you assume people only love Japanese audio porn revolving around Lolita and/or weeaboo themes. You should change your title to reflect that it's for Japanese audio or Japanese speakers with bad English.

[Nosebleed]

3 minutes ago, OriginalRen said:

I love how you assume people only love Japanese audio porn revolving around Lolita and/or weeaboo themes.

I didn't even mention lolis anywhere in my post though. Ren go home you're drunk.

3 minutes ago, OriginalRen said:

You should change your title to reflect that it's for Japanese audio.

I think it's pretty self explanatory considering the place we're in, and even if it's not I clarify that early on.

[OriginalRen]

2 hours ago, Nosebleed said:

I didn't even mention lolis anywhere in my post though. Ren go home you're drunk.

I think it's pretty self explanatory considering the place we're in, and even if it's not I clarify that early on.

Whatever.

[Templarseeker]

Cool guide! Looks very intriguing! 

Might wanna try some it in the future whenever I got tons of spare time... A Templar/Crusader also needs some stress relieve such as these from time to time if you know what I mean (Snickers)  

[Dergonu]

Thanks for actually making this guide

 

After I found out about this the other day I went ahead and just bought something from the top rated seemingly at random to test it out. It's pretty freaking awesome

Now it should be easier to navigate the site and stuff.

Thanks nosebleed

[Nosebleed]

Alright, now that I slept on it I realized I missed a couple points I wanted to make so I added those at the end now if any of you care to read them.

I don't think I forgot anything now, but if I did I'll make sure to post it.

16 hours ago, Asonn said:

Nice guide I guess...

(PS: Link me the Nii Nii ASMR again, I really liked it but I can't be bother to searching for it. )

I already sent Asonn this but I figured I'd leave the links here anyway if anyone cares.
This is one of my absolute favorite tracks of all time. Hell, I could probably even call it my favorite.

• 1st entry http://www.dlsite.com/maniax/work/=/product_id/RJ110736.html
• Sequel http://www.dlsite.com/maniax/work/=/product_id/RJ113572.html

The sequel is better since you actually get to have sex, the 1st one just involves masturbation. They both sound awesome though, this is a seriously talented voice actress.

[Okarin]

Seems like a money grab to me.

Quoting Natalie Imbruglia:

"Hear a bell ring, sex sells everything, but I don't buy it, so don't try it..."

[Nosebleed]

10 minutes ago, Okarin said:

Seems like a money grab to me.

Quoting Natalie Imbruglia:

"Hear a bell ring, sex sells everything, but I don't buy it, so don't try it..."

That's like saying selling music is money grabbing.
Yes, sex sells, that doesn't invalidade the legitimacy of the medium though. Seems pretty silly to think just because it has sex in it it's somehow worse.
If you think everything with sex as a basis is money grabbing, then I have some bad news for you regarding VNs.
This medium is clearly catered to people who enjoy spending some alone time, I don't think there's any problem with it existing as it fills a pretty nice niche and the fans of it really enjoy it.

[Okarin]

I have doubts about its validity as porn itself, but I'm no expert on this matter.

Porn clearly isn't bad per se; but the general rule is "all things in moderation".

I said money grab, because the whole thing seems to me like a "fantastic idea" from an enterpreneur. Well I have to admit that it hasn't been done before. But will it be a fad, or has it come to stay? We'll see.

[Nosebleed]

I mean, pornography involves visual material and this is audio-only stuff, so on a semantics level, it's not technically porn, but what the hell am I supposed to call it lol (writing erotic voice works takes too long, sorry).

Also drama CDs have existed for a very long time in the Otaku industry so this type of stuff has been done for a while now, it's just that this is a more specific branch of those drama CDs with very specific purposes.

This is more niche than VNs, I doubt it'll ever go big due to how specific it is. Even my all time favorite works don't reach the 1k download mark, so I don't know why you seem to think this is some money making scheme when it feels more like it's just doujin circles and freelance voice actors trying to offer something of value to a very small niche and make a name for themselves there.

My whole point with the post was to try and introduce a new medium to people. You can argue definitions, but regardless of the name, it still is what it is and I don't think there's anything wrong with introducing people to something they might want to experiment and possibly even come to enjoy. No reason to be so adamant about it I guess is what I'm saying. If you don't enjoy it that's fine too.

[Okarin]

I just wanted to express my thoughts. The thread is fine and interesting. Maybe I'll even come to appreciate the genre in the future, who knows...

Looking at it as a business, I guess everyone wracks their heads in search of that thing no one has done, and this seemed like a perfect example. Even if it's a derivation of drama CDs, as you say. That it was just doujin level, it hadn't occurred to me.