The Complete Guide to High-end Audio

The Complete Guide to High-end Audio PDF

Author: Robert Harley

Publisher: Acapella Publishing

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 586

ISBN-13: 9780964084940

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Expanded and revised to cover recent developments, this text should tell you what you need to know to become a better listener and buyer of quality high-fidelity components. New sections include: super audio CD; high-resolution audio on DVD; and single-ended amplifiers.

The Absolute Sound's Illustrated History of High-End Audio

The Absolute Sound's Illustrated History of High-End Audio PDF

Author: Robert Harley

Publisher:

Published: 2013-11-20

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9780989829700

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The Absolute Sound's Illustrated History of High-End Audio documents the history of the high-end audio industry in a series of three graphic-rich coffee-table books. Volume One: Loudspeakers presents the development of high-performance loudspeakers from the earliest experiments to today's high-tech designs. The book includes new interviews with the founders of now iconic loudspeaker manufacturers who recount their companies' histories and evolution from garage-based experiments to global leaders in the high-end speaker industry. Lavishly illustrated with many never-before-seen archival photos, The Absolute Sound's Illustrated History of High-End Audio showcases the key technological developments, landmark designs, and revolutionary technologies that transformed the first primitive loudspeakers into today's modern high-end industry. The Absolute Sound's Illustrated History of High-End Audio is written by the editorial staff of The Absolute Sound. Founded in 1973, The Absolute Sound is the world's most respected magazine covering high-end audio. Many of the book's contributors have been writing about high-end audio for decades, and bring their unique experience and insight to documenting high-performance audio's rich legacy.

Hi-Fi

Hi-Fi PDF

Author: Gideon Schwartz

Publisher: Phaidon Press

Published: 2019-10-30

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780714878089

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A beyond-cool look at the world of high-end audio design for passionate collectors, obsessive audiophiles, and design fans At a time when sales of vinyl records have hit a 25-year high, and analog technologies are providing the kind of extraordinary audio experiences that our increasingly digital world has started to remove, Hi-Fi is essential reading. This unique book explores just how, when, and why the world fell in love with the look, feel, and sound of top-of-the-line audio equipment. Hi-Fi traces this fascinating evolution from the 1950s to today (and tomorrow), taking readers right up to the current renaissance of all things analog and the emergence of cutting-edge designs for die-hard audiophiles.

Perfecting Sound Forever

Perfecting Sound Forever PDF

Author: Greg Milner

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2009-06-09

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 9781429957151

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In 1915, Thomas Edison proclaimed that he could record a live performance and reproduce it perfectly, shocking audiences who found themselves unable to tell whether what they were hearing was an Edison Diamond Disc or a flesh-and-blood musician. Today, the equation is reversed. Whereas Edison proposed that a real performance could be rebuilt with absolute perfection, Pro Tools and digital samplers now allow musicians and engineers to create the illusion of performances that never were. In between lies a century of sonic exploration into the balance between the real and the represented. Tracing the contours of this history, Greg Milner takes us through the major breakthroughs and glorious failures in the art and science of recording. An American soldier monitoring Nazi radio transmissions stumbles onto the open yet revolutionary secret of magnetic tape. Japanese and Dutch researchers build a first-generation digital audio format and watch as their "compact disc" is marketed by the music industry as the second coming of Edison yet derided as heretical by analog loyalists. The music world becomes addicted to volume in the nineties and fights a self-defeating "loudness war" to get its fix. From Les Paul to Phil Spector to King Tubby, from vinyl to pirated CDs to iPods, Milner's Perfecting Sound Forever pulls apart musical history to answer a crucial question: Should a recording document reality as faithfully as possible, or should it improve upon or somehow transcend the music it records? The answers he uncovers will change the very way we think about music.

Sound Reproduction

Sound Reproduction PDF

Author: Floyd E. Toole

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-28

Total Pages: 956

ISBN-13: 1317415094

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Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms, Third Edition explains the physical and perceptual processes that are involved in sound reproduction and demonstrates how to use the processes to create high-quality listening experiences in stereo and multichannel formats. Understanding the principles of sound production is necessary to achieve the goals of sound reproduction in spaces ranging from recording control rooms and home listening rooms to large cinemas. This revision brings new science-based perspectives on the performance of loudspeakers, room acoustics, measurements and equalization, all of which need to be appropriately used to ensure the accurate delivery of music and movie sound tracks from creators to listeners. The robust website (www.routledge.com/cw/toole) is the perfect companion to this necessary resource.

Pickin' on Peachtree

Pickin' on Peachtree PDF

Author: Wayne W. Daniel

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9780252069680

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But for a few twists of fate, Atlanta could have grown to be the recording center that Nashville is today. Pickin' on Peachtree traces Atlanta's emergence in the 1920s as a major force in country recording and radio broadcasting and its forty years as a hub of country music. From the Old Time Fiddlers' Conventions and barn dances through the rise of station WSB and other key radio outlets, Wayne W. Daniel thoroughly documents the consolidation of country music as big business in Atlanta. He also profiles a vast array of performers, radio personalities, and recording moguls who transformed the Peachtree city into the nerve center of early country music.

Absolute Music, Mechanical Reproduction

Absolute Music, Mechanical Reproduction PDF

Author: Arved Mark Ashby

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 0520264797

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"Arved Ashby writes with a keen sense of the historical processes, ironies, and reversals that seem to characterize the ways that musicologists think about, and contemporary listeners experience, works and performance. This book is a major contribution to the burgeoning body of critical musicological literature on recordings; anybody interested in that field, or in the question of the 'artwork' in the contemporary world, needs to read this book--which fortunately, is a great pleasure to do."--Adam Krims, author of Music and Urban Geography "The relationship between classical music and recording is strangely conflicted: on the one hand recorded music is the perfect realization of aesthetic autonomy, on the other hand it commodifies music and transforms its role within society. Ashby's book offers a penetrating analysis of these cultural conflicts, showing how technological developments from the phonogram to the mp3 have changed our basic sense of what music is as well as the ways in which we consume it. What emerges from this sustained study of the relationship between technology and values is a view of classical musical culture that is both richer and truer to life."--Nicholas Cook, author of A Guide to Musical Analysis "Lively and persuasive. Ashby has the enviable, rare ability to lead the reader comfortably through highly complex material without oversimplifying. This is a must-read for composers, music theorists, performers, musicologists, critics, and anyone with an interest in classical music beyond the elementary level."--Jonathan Dunsby, author of Performing Music