[Steven Sullivan]

This just came ut a few weeks back, it's by Greg Milner.
It's a history of recording technology written for a non-specialist
audience.

Lots of interesting quotes from 'names' in that history, and things get
particularly quotey when he gets to the start of the CD era.

One theme that comes out of the history is how often audio has been
divided into two camps about 'philosophical' issues about what a
recoding 'should' be, arising from
advancing technology.

Such divides go all the way back to debates about
'acoustic vs electrical' recording methods, in Edison's day!

Once he gets to the digital era, there's enough 'but on the other hand'
reportage in the book to **** off
both sides of what we call the "Great Debate", though I think
mainly because they provide such reliably good 'quote', he tends
to give more print space to the Michael Fremers of the story, than the
advocates of digital, even while himself maintaining a moderately
self-aware agnosticism.

There are a few factual gaffes -- he seems to think that 25-years olds
can't hear above 15 kHz, for example, and that the 'absolute limit'
of hearing is 20 kHz -- but so far (I'm not quite done with the
book yet) they are rare. My main criticism would be that Mliner
tries hard...sometimes too hard...to draw Cultural Significance
from his facts, and he occasionally goes for a dubious
'human interest' angle in an attempt to liven up the story.
One of the most ludicrous 'such sidetracks is spent on and with Dr.
John Diamond, the alternative medicine quack who still
pushes the idea that PCM audio is physiologically fatiguing to listen to.
Milner makes the appropriate noises about Diamond's claims being
unverified scientifically, but it bugs me that 'laypersons' reading this
book would come away with a vastly overinflated idea of Diamond's place
in the story, when in fact he's an amusing footnote.

Still, I've been mostly enthralled by the story (I'm currently reading the
section on the history of the Loudness Wars), occasionally amused
(Telarc's Bob Woods' response to Doug Sax's many strident anti-digital tirades:
"My reaction was: go **** yourself.") or appalled (too much
print given to Steve Albini's and Neil Young's emotionally overwrought
Luddite claims; and worse, one Roger Lagadec, a Swiss engineer who helped
develop CD and should thus know better, quoted Young "I could
probably have run a test that made him look silly. But what would I have
accomplished? I would have made a technical test that said that according to
a very simple criterion, Neil Young could not hear beyond 14 or 15 kHz or so.
But he is a genius. He knows everything there is to know about sound,
and if I were to compare what he says with the result of a test taht I
engineered, I would say screw the test, he knows what he's talking abou."
This suggests to me that Mr. Lagadoc shouldn't be engineering tests
of audibility.)

--
-S
We have it in our power to begin the world over again - Thomas Paine

[Scott[_6_]]

On Jul 5, 9:39*am, ScottW2 wrote:
On Jul 5, 8:56*am, Steven Sullivan wrote:







Still, I've been mostly enthralled by the story (I'm currently reading the
section on the history of the Loudness Wars), occasionally amused
(Telarc's Bob Woods' response to Doug Sax's many strident anti-digital tirades:
"My reaction was: go **** yourself.") or appalled (too much
print given to Steve Albini's and Neil Young's emotionally overwrought *
Luddite claims; and worse, one Roger Lagadec, a Swiss engineer who helped
develop CD and should thus know better, quoted Young "I could
probably have run a test that made him look silly. *But what would I have
accomplished? *I would have made a technical test that said that according to
a very simple criterion, Neil Young could not hear beyond 14 or 15 kHz or so.
But he is a genius. *He knows everything there is to know about sound,
and if I were to compare what he says with the result of a test taht I
engineered, I would say screw the test, he knows what he's talking abou."
This suggests to me that Mr. Lagadoc shouldn't be engineering tests
of audibility.)

I don't understand why Neil Young's views on recording technology are
given such credence. *I love his work as a musician/songwriter,
especially the 70's era stuff, but not a single one of his works gets
an honorable mention for the quality of the recording IMO. Classic
Records did a relative nice job on greatest hits but the remastered
DVD-A releases are are slight improvements at best over the CDs on
selected tracks, but that's faint praise relative to the original
releases.
Nothing in his prolific catalogue is a benchmark demonstrating
recording prowess IMO.

ScottW-

You might want to check out the recent release of Live at Massey Hall.
I think Rust Never Sleeps was also a pretty outstanding recording.
Live at Massey Hall is pretty amazing. Not to mention the music is
fantastic.