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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... live in the galactic ripples. Our prehistory is frozen sound. Or maybe a compact disc is a better model for who we are. Unlike a phonograph's stylus, which moves from the disc's edge to its center, the laser that reads a CD begins at ...
... live voice and its reproduced facsimile. Fuller told the audience that Edison's machine could “hear” as sensitively as the human ear, and could therefore reproduce a sound that was indistinguishable from the original. “I shall ...
... live music event; for many others, it was the first time they'd been invited to hear expensive recorded sound and to think about it critically. Like hardcore bands in the early eighties going wherever a punk kid could book an American ...
... live in it, this was what it was like. Fremer spent the next few hours putting on records— Steely Dan, Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Elvis Costello, Shellac, the Smiths, Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, XTC, the Clash—one after ...
... live.” If Elvis Presley had actually been singing “Fever” in front of me, I would not have been able to hear the jangle of the jewelry on his wrists. If I had seen the Clash at the Palladium in 1980, I wouldn't have been able to hear so ...
Contents
From the New World | |
Digital | |
Death and Other Dispatches from the Loudness | |
Liner Notes | |
Notes | |
Acknowledgments | |
Notes | |