Customer Reviews

Practical Recording Techniques, Fourth Edition: The step-by-step approach to professional audio recording

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For what it is, this book does a good job of introducing newbies to audio production. It claims to be for intermediate recordists too, but that is a stretch. If you have any experience recording anything at all, this book will probably not be very helpful. There is a section near the end that mentions some newer microphone arrays for recording in surround. To me this seems too advanced for beginners, but does not offer enough detail for veterans to really implement. I was disappointed in this book for being so utterly basic, but that could be terrific for other readers who need to be walked through the process setp-by-step.

I'm in the middle of reading this book for an audio production course. It was the assigned text, and while it's not as expensive as many textbooks these days, it's also not a very well produced book. There are no photos, only illustrations that look like they were done on an Apple IIci. The writing is clear, though they repeat information about several topics. My biggest complaint is that it focuses on music recording, while I'm interested in other genres of audio. The authors don't ever acknowledge that you would want to recording something besides music. If you want to learn about music recording and want a very practical approach, this book is a good introduction. But I wish it considered theoretical questions beyond the merely practical.

This book is somewhat dull to read straight through. It includes alot of details that may not be relevant and gives alot of examples that may be completely useless to the reader. Many concepts and passages are repeated throughout the book. That being said, the book makes for an excellent reference for many circumstances. From studio microphone techniques to recording live events, this book gives in-depth details and offers more than just one suggestion for all situations. It also includes a 4 page sound glossary and a nearly 50 page general glossary. This is a great buy for any non-professional recording studio.

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Bartlett knows his stuff.
His magazine articles and web posts are great.
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I wish he had told us more of what he knows here.
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The book is good as far as it goes.
It does not provide enough detail, IMHO.
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But most books provide only shallow info.
And they tend to wander off on irrelevant tangents.
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At least he didn't spend half this book telling us how to mike a snare drum underwater or somesuch ridiculous thing like other books do.
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He did cover important relevant supporting areas that are beyond recording *techniques*. .
If all you want is *recording* *techniques* you may find the extra material wasted.
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Should you read this book? Yes.
Should you buy this book? Probably not.
But I have not found any book suitable for a home amateur pc music recording studio/performer to actually own yet.
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The glossaries are good.
But if you google you can find a couple of good ones on the net.
Most books' glossaries are small and often contain errors.
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It contains a CD that looks useful. I rarely use any cd from any book but the index for the cd indicates this one will be helpful.
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This is one of about 3 books that I recommend for home audio info. Check all my reviews for others.
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Overall good and useful, even if parts may not be useful for all readers.
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This is a great book. I bought it as a textbook for a class I took, and I very much enjoyed it. It has great, detailed instructions on everything from setting up a home studio to how to mic different instruments to tips on creating good sound. It's also fairly up-to-date and has lots of real-world examples of gear and software that the authors recommend. Buy it - you'll learn something new.