Between Air and Electricity


Book Description

Composers and sound artists have explored for decades how to transform microphones and loudspeakers from “inaudible” technology into genuinely new musical instruments. While the sound reproduction industry had claimed perfect high fidelity already at the beginning of the twentieth century, these artists found surprising ways of use – for instance tweaking microphones, swinging loudspeakers furiously around, ditching microphones in all kinds of vessels, or strapping loudspeakers to body parts of the audience. Between air and electricity traces their quest and sets forward a new theoretical framework, providing historic background on technological and artistic development, and diagrams of concert and performance set-ups. From popular noise musician Merzbow to minimalist classic Alvin Lucier, cult instrument inventor Hugh Davies, or contemporary visual artist Lynn Pook – they all aimed to make audible what was supposed to remain silent.




Hearing Loss


Book Description

Millions of Americans experience some degree of hearing loss. The Social Security Administration (SSA) operates programs that provide cash disability benefits to people with permanent impairments like hearing loss, if they can show that their impairments meet stringent SSA criteria and their earnings are below an SSA threshold. The National Research Council convened an expert committee at the request of the SSA to study the issues related to disability determination for people with hearing loss. This volume is the product of that study. Hearing Loss: Determining Eligibility for Social Security Benefits reviews current knowledge about hearing loss and its measurement and treatment, and provides an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the current processes and criteria. It recommends changes to strengthen the disability determination process and ensure its reliability and fairness. The book addresses criteria for selection of pure tone and speech tests, guidelines for test administration, testing of hearing in noise, special issues related to testing children, and the difficulty of predicting work capacity from clinical hearing test results. It should be useful to audiologists, otolaryngologists, disability advocates, and others who are concerned with people who have hearing loss.




The Rest Is Noise


Book Description

Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007 Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007 A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007 In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.




The Audio Expert


Book Description

The Audio Expert is a comprehensive reference that covers all aspects of audio, with many practical, as well as theoretical, explanations. Providing in-depth descriptions of how audio really works, using common sense plain-English explanations and mechanical analogies with minimal math, the book is written for people who want to understand audio at the deepest, most technical level, without needing an engineering degree. It's presented in an easy-to-read, conversational tone, and includes more than 400 figures and photos augmenting the text. The Audio Expert takes the intermediate to advanced recording engineer or audiophile and makes you an expert. The book goes far beyond merely explaining how audio "works." It brings together the concepts of audio, aural perception, musical instrument physics, acoustics, and basic electronics, showing how they're intimately related. Describing in great detail many of the practices and techniques used by recording and mixing engineers, the topics include video production and computers. Rather than merely showing how to use audio devices such as equalizers and compressors, Ethan Winer explains how they work internally, and how they are spec'd and tested. Most explanations are platform-agnostic, applying equally to Windows and Mac operating systems, and to most software and hardware. TheAudioExpertbook.com, the companion website, has audio and video examples to better present complex topics such as vibration and resonance. There are also videos demonstrating editing techniques and audio processing, as well as interviews with skilled musicians demonstrating their instruments and playing techniques.




Introduction to Digital Filters


Book Description

A digital filter can be pictured as a "black box" that accepts a sequence of numbers and emits a new sequence of numbers. In digital audio signal processing applications, such number sequences usually represent sounds. For example, digital filters are used to implement graphic equalizers and other digital audio effects. This book is a gentle introduction to digital filters, including mathematical theory, illustrative examples, some audio applications, and useful software starting points. The theory treatment begins at the high-school level, and covers fundamental concepts in linear systems theory and digital filter analysis. Various "small" digital filters are analyzed as examples, particularly those commonly used in audio applications. Matlab programming examples are emphasized for illustrating the use and development of digital filters in practice.




Working with Sound


Book Description

Working with Sound is an exploration of the ever-changing working practices of audio development in the era of hybrid collaboration in the games industry. Through learnings from the pre-pandemic remote and isolated worlds of audio work, sound designers, composers, and dialogue designers find themselves equipped uniquely to thrive in the hybrid, remote, and studio-based realms of today’s fast-evolving working landscapes. With unique insights into navigating the worlds of isolation and collaboration, this book explores ways of thinking and working in this world, equipping the reader with inspiration to sustainably tackle the many stages of the development process. Working with Sound is an essential guide for professionals working in dynamic audio teams of all sizes, as well as the designers, producers, artists, animators, and programmers who collaborate closely with their colleagues working on game audio and sound.




Game Sound


Book Description

A distinguishing feature of video games is their interactivity, and sound plays an important role in this: a player's actions can trigger dialogue, sound effects, ambient sound, and music. This book introduces readers to the various aspects of game audio, from its development in early games to theoretical discussions of immersion and realism.




How the Internet Works


Book Description

The mystery is revealed at last in detailed color diagrams and explanations, graphically depicting the technologies that make the Internet work and how they fit together. You'll be able to understand and even one-up your computer geek friends after reading chapters on the Internet's underlying architecture, communication on the Internet, how the Web works, multimedia, and security and parental controls. For anyone interested in the Internet. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Sound Works


Book Description

What is sound design? What is its function in the early 21st century and into the future? Sound Works examines these questions in four parts: Part 1, "Why This Sound?", presents an overview of the modern history of sound design. Part 2 is highly visual and provides a glance onto a sound designer's workbench and the current state of "Sonic Labor." Part 3 uses cultural analysis to explore our contemporary "Living with Sounds." The final and fourth part then proposes a series of anthropological and political interpretations of how “Sound Works” today. This book is not a manual on sound design; it instead argues for a cultural theory of sound design for sound designers and sound artists, for clients who commission a sound design and for researchers in the fields of sound studies, design research, and cultural studies




Audiobooks, Literature, and Sound Studies


Book Description

This is the first scholarly work to examine the cultural significance of the "talking book" since the invention of the phonograph in 1877, the earliest machine to enable the reproduction of the human voice. Recent advances in sound technology make this an opportune moment to reflect on the evolution of our reading practices since this remarkable invention. Some questions addressed by the collection include: How does auditory literature adapt printed texts? What skills in close listening are necessary for its reception? What are the social consequences of new listening technologies? In sum, the essays gathered together by this collection explore the extent to which the audiobook enables us not just to hear literature but to hear it in new ways. Bringing together a set of reflections on the enrichments and impoverishments of the reading experience brought about by developments in sound technology, this collection spans the earliest adaptations of printed texts into sound by Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, and other novelists from the late nineteenth century to recordings by contemporary figures such as Toni Morrison and Barack Obama at the turn of the twenty-first century. As the voices gathered here suggest, it is time to give a hearing to one of the most talked about new media of the past century.