This book, subtitled "An Aural History of Recorded Music," covers the history of recording technology in broad strokes. It's real concern, though, is the question of the real relationship between a musical performance and a recording. As the author says in the preface, "Ultimately, this is the story of what it means to make a recording of music -- a representation of music -- and declare it to be music itself."
The story starts with Thomas Edison and his rivals at the Victor Talking Machine Company. The goal in the early days of recording was fidelity: accurately capturing a real-world event. But this seemingly straightforward goal is not so simple on further examination. If you record a musical performance in a music hall, which is a more accurate representation of the music, a recording that captures the feel of the hall or one that captures the music without the "distortion" of the hall's acoustics? You can record an orchestra with greater dynamic range than any person in the hall could hear (softer pianos, louder violins); is that cheating?
Nowadays, of course, most recorded music doesn't capture an actual live performance. The recording is built from disparate sounds, recorded at different places and times, many of which are electronically generated or altered. So what criteria of perfection replaces fidelity?
I find these questions interesting, and incidentally I think they can give perspective on so-called "correspondence theories of truth" (with the world as the live performance and our concepts as the recording).
On top of the philosophical questions and the history lesson, Perfecting Sound Forever also gives the reader new things to listen for in their favorite music: the "dry" sound of 1970s California, the ambiance of Columbia 30th Street Studio, the compressed range of the Loudness Wars.
Very informative, thought-provoking, and enjoyable.
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