BOOK REVIEW Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History...&qu

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"Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music"


Like most of us, I have read a lot of books on the subject of this thing we do; making music.

There are many interesting musician biographies, producer biographies, genre overviews etc, which I have poured over looking for those elusive pearls of wisdom and insight. Until I received a copy of "Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music" as a birthday gift from a producer friend, I had never seen a book which specifically tracks the history of recorded music. Author Greg Milner has done a great job researching this subject and assembled it all in an incredibly readable overview. He's divided the book into three major sections:

Acoustical / Electrical:
This section deals with the invention of the wax cylinder up through Bell Labs early work in electrical recording and amplification.

Analog:
As you might imagine, this section covers the 'electrical' era of music recording and reproduction, starting with Alan Lomax' early disk recordings for the Library of Congress to the introduction of magnetic tape in the 1940s and on up through the multitrack excesses of the 1970s and 80s

Digital:
This section makes up fully half of the book. From the "Soundstream" system to the Sony PCM-F1, from Bruce Springsteen's "The River" to the first commercial CD release of "Born in the USA" up through the developments in digital sampling. It also includes interesting parallel timelines such as the influence of King Tubby on sound as an experience vs sound as a document of performance and how the modern DAW has enabled this transformation.


It's simply one of the best books you will find on this broad topic, it has very very few technical errors or 'cringe spots' as I call them, and I recommend it highly. On the other hand, if everyone were to read this, the historical perspective gained might eliminate 90% of the opinion driven flame wars common to internet discussions about recording techniques and equipment, and then what?


Here is a great NPR interview with the author about the book:

See more reviews here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/ju ... -sean-ohag an-pop-music

http://www.powells.com/biblio/0571211658?&PID=33241

http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2009/ ... sic-record ing-milner

http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/30_ ... _days_perf ecting_sound_forever_an_aural_history_of_recorded_m/

http://chicago.timeout.com/articles/boo ... eg-milner- unravels-the-story-of-recorded-music-in-perfecting-sound-for ever


Read the book here online.