17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Get this book, now!, September 27, 2009
This review is from: Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music (Hardcover)
A layman like me could have been intimidated by the charts and bar graphs that pop up every now and again to prove things like replay gain and compression but Greg Milner had me from the start. He starts out with a bang, comparing the creation of the universe to `cutting a record,' then laying out the quirky, fascinating history of the men--and their methods--who proved that Marconi was right and `no sound ever dies.' Like the scientists and inventors, showmen and audio geeks, Willy Lomans and record company suits who wanted to raise the bar--whether that bar be quality, authenticity, loudness, or sales--Milner is also obsessed, and not just with the trajectory--the wax cylinders, analog tape and binary code that plays us back--but with pondering age-old questions: what is art? what is reality? is there truth? It's a rollicking, uproarious, rock `n rolla' ride and Milner takes you with him inside the "sweet spot" of an Edison recording of Bake Dat Chicken Pie; behind the prison walls of the Louisiana State Penitentiary and Lead Belly's thrilling Irene; next to Ike Turner's broken amp and its grungy sound at Sun Studio; beside the pummeling drums of Springstein's Born in the U.S.A.; inside the mix of the master King Tubby; compressed in the eardrum splitting Californication of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. You are there. This is a brilliant, funny record that chronicles the amazing story of recorded (American) sound while raising important questions--to me anyway--like who owns sound? Do I want to hear what I hear, or better? Are the blockbuster Frankensteins of pop music today art? If you have the faintest interest in American music and what it says about our culture, run don't walk and read this book!
Nancy Becker
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Leisurely Stroll Through The History of Audio Technology, September 17, 2009
This review is from: Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music (Hardcover)
"Perfecting Sound Forever" is both more and less than its title would imply. On the one hand, it is purportedly a history of the technology of recorded music. But it includes many lengthy sidetrips and stories which will engage readers who take an active interest in both the development and the application of recorded sound. For example, the author discusses at length the use of "sound tests" by the makers of the first acoustic recording and playback machines. In these tests (which were as much marketing techniques as much as "scientific" experiments), a singer or instrumentalist would pretend to be playing on stage, then walk off stage in the middle of the performance as a curtain was parted to show that the audience had been listening to an acoustic wax cylinder or disk played through a horn. Believe it or not, the audience was astonished to discover that it had not been listening to a live performance. Similar tests continued to be used right up until the present, always with the same result, which demonstrates the substantial psycho-acoustic element in the listening experience.
Many readers, including myself, will enjoy Milner's lengthy sidetrips describing in detail such historic applications of new recording techniques as John and Alan Lomax's trips to the rural South to record "authentic Negro music," discovering along the way the great blues singer "Huddie" Ledbetter, better known as "Lead Belly." Many of these stories are only tangentially related to the central story of the development of audio recording techniques. Others, such as Milner's discussion of Les Paul's pioneering use of over-tracking to achieve the sound he wanted, are more directly related to the main narrative. If you are not irritated by the author's wanderings off the "track" (sort of an audiophile's "Moby Dick"), and you have a reasonable understanding of the main outlines of the development of audio technology, you will probably thoroughly enjoy this book.
But be forewarned. As audio recording technology hits the crossroads intersectig it with the birth of rock 'n roll in the mid-fifties, there is almost no discussion of the application of audio technology to the recording of classical or jazz music. Milner confines his discussion to pop and rock almost exclusively thereafter. Although his discussion of the influence of the evolution of recording technology on the pop music field is important, if your tastes run to Miles Davis or Dmitri Shostakovich rather than hip-hop or The Red Hot Chili Peppers, you may find your enjoyment of the book substantially lessened.
That said, Miller's exploration of the uses made of digital recording technology, with its promise of greater sensitivity and higher fidelity, is fascinating. He describes in great detail the "misuse" of audio compression and clipping to achieve greater "loudness" even though the results on pop music paradoxically lessened the dynamic range and fidelity of the music being made. Milner paints a picture in which the democratization of the production of pop music made possible by the availability of ever more affordable devices to produce music - the "producer" could now record and remix from a garage instead of an acoustically pristine recording hall - contributed to the so-called "loudness wars" in which records were so compressed that the dynamic range of a pop song from beginning to end might be as little as 9 dB. Loudness got the attention of people flipping through the FM dials, and audiophiles were no longer the object of the producer's attention as the recording industry's prime demographic was hearing their favorite music through cheap stereo systems and later through MP3 devices such as iPods using low fidelity earbuds. The lesson seems to be that people get the music they deserve, and mediocre sound quality is perfectly satisfactory to the average listener.
The author's thesis is that increasingly sophisticated production devices such as Pro-Tools and Auto-Tune, which allow the correction of pitch for a flat singer, and the assembly of "music" one note at a time rather than by capturing even a semblance of live ensemble musical performance, have paradoxically corrupted the quality of most modern recordings. It is interesting then that he winds up at the end of the book putting himself through the paces of a modern day "sound test." In a blind comparison of a uncompressed sound clip in almost CD quality, with an identical clip of the same music that has been compressed using a codec and bit rate unknown to him, the author tries to identify the compressed clip. You may be surprised at the results reported by Milner as he processes the music through his own psycho-acoustic equipment (his ears and his brain).
Overall, I can confidently recommend this book to anyone with more than a passing interest in the history of audio recording, and some of the more interesting stories that are part of that history. However, if reading page after page about lossless and lossy dynamic compression in MP3 players produces sleepiness instead of excitement, you might want to pick up an old copy of Aaron Copland's "What To Listen For in Music."
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
intermittently interesting history of sound recording, December 24, 2009
This review is from: Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music (Hardcover)
I found this history of sound recording a patchy affair. It is worth pointing out the following factors that might influence the potential purchaser. Firstly Greg Milner is an obvious vinyl and analog fan; he is quite dismissive of the digital era and spends many pages trying to prove his point. Secondly, if you are a classical or jazz music enthusiast, much of the lengthy discussion centred around rock music will be of little interest. Scant attention is given to later phases of orchestral recordings; surely a decent overview of the subject would have to cover this aspect in some detail.The fact that Milner omits any mention of the great John Culshaw/Decca or Mercury teams demonstrates a somewhat blinkered view of sound recording history. There is also scant mention of recent SACD technology, dubious as that might be.
The more interesting sections to my mind were those that cover the earlier recording eras, particularly the development of magnetic tape recording and multitracking. Milner's breezy writing is reasonable rather than brilliant. A definative history of this fascinating subject still remains to be written.
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