Ascent without music
Posted March 19th 2007, updated June 20th 2014
When you head for the surface after using the Cartographer, some very loud music starts up as you trigger the first of many Jackals. It's so loud that you can barely hear the sound of enemy movements, a tactical disadvantage that annoys the heck out of me. It's akin to fighting deaf. Or half deaf at least. However, if you simply wait for about six minutes, the music ends and you can ascend without it - a pleasant novelty.
Note also that the music seems designed to encourage a gung-ho approach to the ascent. If you instead fancy taking things slowly and stealtily, it sounds quite inappropriate as well as being a handicap. Besides which, it might not even last until you reach the top! So you may prefer to do without it.
Music-free ascent save
You can easily create a save for fighting a music-free ascent repeatedly. When you trigger those Jackals you'll be due a checkpoint, but you can keep it delayed using jumping; just keep the jump button down if you like. Or if you get bored of that you can instead slowly fire needles into the void one by one (back where the overshield was), or pips of plasma from a plasma pistol. When the music ends, stop your delaying to finally get the checkpoint (as long as you're not considered to be under enemy threat). Save it, and you're done.
There are actually two trigger lines you can use, as shown in my pictures. The upper one is along a raised walkway and occurs where things become tunnel-like. Ahead will be a group of Jackals (four on Legendary), though sometimes they may've gone up the ramp and into the next room. The lower trigger line is at the start of a ramp leading up to where some Jackals guard some active camouflage in a small raised area above (three on Legendary). You can later get up to that area with a rocket jump or grenade jump if you like. And by the way, it's a lot of fun to stealthily grenade that group from below, such as seen in BCM106. Whichever trigger line you use, you get both groups of Jackals.