Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded MusicIn 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. |
From inside the book
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... audience. It was uncanny how closely Miller's recorded voice mirrored the sounds coming from her mouth onstage. The record continued playing, with Miller onstage dipping in and out of it like a DJ. The audience cheered every time she ...
... audience craned forward to see when her lips stopped moving. It was the only way they could tell when she wasn't singing. As the song neared its end, at a point when both Millers were singing, the audience received one final surprise ...
... event like Carnegie Hall, a human voice could dwarf the Diamond Disc. “I remember I stood right by the machine,” Case said. “The audience was there, and there was nobody on stage with me. The machine played and I sang.
... audience in nearby Montclair nearly a century earlier. Continuum's stated goal —“release every last nuance of recorded information without adding additional artifacts”—describes exactly what Edison wanted to do. He believed that a ...
... audiences, I wanted to have a transcendent experience, and if I didn't have one, didn't that reflect badly on me? I wonder if this feeling on a large scale helped the tone tests work. Because let's face it—it's difficult to conceive how so.
Contents
From the New World | |
Digital | |
Death and Other Dispatches from the Loudness | |
Liner Notes | |
Notes | |
Acknowledgments | |
Notes | |