Critical Listening Skills for Audio Professionals [Hardcover]

F. Alton Everest (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1598630237 | ISBN-13: 978-1598630237 | Publication Date: June 1, 2006 | Edition: 2

Audio productions are made or broken by the quality of the recording engineer's ears. The ability to properly discern sounds, identify subtle problems, and act accordingly to apply the necessary fix makes all the difference in the quality of the final tracks and master. The good news is that these crucial skills can be learned. The ability to instantly identify frequencies, hear hidden distortions, and instinctively reconcile conflicts in the EQ of instruments, audio elements, vocals and more are traits of those who have mastered the art of audio production. The best engineers have trained their ears to immediately recognize audio problems that the consumer and those new to recording arts would likely not hear, but that, if left unresolved, would result in an amateurish final product. For more than two decades, students of F. Alton Everest's Critical Listening and Auditory Perception courses have rapidly developed these skills by using the intense lessons found in this book and on the CD. Unfortunately the books and CDs included with the course were usually too expensive for aspiring engineers to purchase and were often available only in colleges, universities, or school libraries. Now for the first time these indispensable training sessions are available with this release of Critical Listening Skills for Audio Professionals. Through hundreds of illustrations and an accompanying disc containing high-resolution MP3 files with nearly five hours of narration of the entire course, you can acquire the audio discernment skills of a seasoned recording engineer by studying this course at your own pace, in your own home.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

The late F. Alton Everest (1909-2005) was the most respected audiologist in the professional recording industry. His revered works and courses produced more than twenty books and editions in his lifetime, including The Master Handbook of Acoustics, Audio Techniques for the Home and Studio, and How to Build a
Small Budget Recording Studio from Scratch ... With 12 Tested Designs. As the supervisor of UC San Diego¿s Listening Section Laboratory during WWII, Everest conducted underwater sound research experiments for the war effort. For 25 years he produced science fi lms for the renowned Moody Institute of Science, followed by years teaching and working as a highly sought after audio consultant.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 218 pages
• Publisher: Artistpro; 2 edition (June 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1598630237
• ISBN-13: 978-1598630237
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #313,828 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Definetely, the book for improving your audio listening skills!, May 2, 2008

By 

D. Lucio "AudioHolic" (Knoxville, TN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Critical Listening Skills for Audio Professionals (Hardcover)

This book contains some clear and self explanatory audio exercises. I hate to acknowledge that most of the exercises could have already been performed by using a 'free' (computer) tone generator to explore the different frequency ranges. Beware, it will require time to learn to listen properly. I was very wrong to believe that by listening to the contents once, I was set. I would suggest to make copies of use a separate sheet of paper to answers the exercises. This way you can repeat it, over and over. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in improving his/her audio listening skills.

*PROS:
-Good and helpful exercises
-Nice correlation between the audio exercises and the freq. graphs on the book.
-If you have no patience to play with a tone generator, this book is well suited for you.

*CONS
-The CD without the book or the book without the CD become useless.
-You need to read the book while you listen to the CD.
-The CD is in fact an MP3-CD, so you may not play it anywhere you want.
-I have the impression that the book is kind of expensive. Many of the exercises can already be performed by anyone using a (free) tone generator.
- The book is kind of bulky to take it anywhere.

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars essential tool for all audio students, May 4, 2008

By 

Nicholas Hoffman (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Critical Listening Skills for Audio Professionals (Hardcover)

This book is acutally a compilation of two of Alton Everests ear training books. The first, Critical listening skills, plays different frequencies, amplitudes, bands, filters, amount of total harmonic distorion, and revervbs. Then you are forced to recognize changes within these different areas. These are crucial ear training skills for anyone trying to break into the world of audio. It's not somehting you can go through once and leave. The book should become part of a routine of ear training.

The second book, Auditory perception, discusses issues relating to the differences between how sound occurs and how we actually perceive it. Another valuable tool for understanding how sound works.

Aparantly this book has been around for a long time but was, until this edition, only available in very expensive editions that were catering toward institutions. This is done by puting the 6 cd's onto 1 mp3 cd. This is my one complaint about this book, that people trying to become audio pros shouldn't use compromised quality files when training there ears. That is why I use the cd's as a guide and for the projects that require more acurate listening I use a tone generator in my DAW to recreate the sounds at a higher quality.

All in all an excellent tool that has, in a short time, already proven very helpfull.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Just what I needed, March 15, 2008

By 

(L)Ove (At. Home, Earth) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Critical Listening Skills for Audio Professionals (Hardcover)

I am currently a student in mediaproduction and not too apt in the field of audio. Often I would come across examples in my textbooks on problems concerning EQ, audio levels, sounds masking eachother comb filter effect etc. My biggest problem is that I do not know what I should listen for. I haven't finished this book yet, but I still feel confident enough about in order to praise it in a review. This book is very good. Nice examples on the CD and very helpful. I do not know how useful it is for audio professionals, but for a student I think it is awesome.

In my first review I wrote that I thought the CD was sloppily made. In fact there was no trouble with the tracks, but since I did not realize that the CD contained mp3's rather than ordinary CD tracks my player read track 10 as track 2. Well, I dont know if I would trust mp3's as a listening reference (even if they have a very hight quality). I wish they could have used CD quality Wave files on a DVD instead. Still a helpful book, though.