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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... played back, making Edison the first human being to record a sound and reproduce it. A few months later, he unveiled the first phonograph, which he used to record a remake of the poem, this time onto tinfoil. And on a Friday evening ...
An Aural History of Recorded Music Greg Milner. “disappeared” every time you played it. The machine was a neutral conduit. It heard everything, and added and subtracted nothing, issuing music so pure that Edison was confident it could ...
... played continuously. Anna Case, an opera singer and Edison recording artist who performed at the most famous tone test, at Carnegie Hall in 1920, is generally credited with launching the tonetest concept a few years earlier, when she ...
... played and I sang with it. Of course, if I had sung loud, it would have been louder than the machine, but I gave my voice the same quality as the machine so they couldn't tell.” Vocal tricks undoubtedly explained some of the tone tests ...
... played on a Caliburn is a copy of a master disc that was created by a stylus responding to the vibrations created by the sound of a master tape. During playback, the Caliburn's stylus traces these analog grooves to recreate an analog of ...
Contents
From the New World | |
Digital | |
Death and Other Dispatches from the Loudness | |
Liner Notes | |
Notes | |
Acknowledgments | |
Notes | |