For classical, try The Symphony, For the Love of Music, and The Concerto, all by Michael Steinberg. The NPR Listener’s Encyclopedia is a huge, but handy guide with recommended recordings. The encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues is a bit out of date due to artists dying off, but aside from that, the info is accurate and it is excellent. You can usually these used on Amazon and other book sites. Hope this helps, I’d love to hear other folks chime in on this.
Books!
I realized that all of my other hobbies - cooking, biking, photography, brewing, have plenty of books written about them, and I in turn have many of them. Listening to my stereo system is probably the hobby I spend the most time with yet have absolutely no books on the subject. So I ask of you, what are the essential books?
I will l note I’m more interested in the “how to listen” flavor versus the super super technical end of things. Ideally it would be a nice mix of both, how a and b leads to this, and how c and d leads to that and later on I could get more into the engineering side. Also would be interested in historical context reads. Lastly I would like recommendations that are actually published in book form. Look forward to your responses. Thanks all!
I will l note I’m more interested in the “how to listen” flavor versus the super super technical end of things. Ideally it would be a nice mix of both, how a and b leads to this, and how c and d leads to that and later on I could get more into the engineering side. Also would be interested in historical context reads. Lastly I would like recommendations that are actually published in book form. Look forward to your responses. Thanks all!
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The Complete Guide to High End Audio, by Robert Harley, is exactly the book you seek. It covers the subject so well that even my first edition now nearly 30 years old still covers so much it is hard to believe. The book is beautifully organized in a way that helps you understand not only exactly what each component does but why and how, and even helps with system building advice. One of the best parts of the book for me is the section on how to listen, what to listen for, and a glossary of terms to describe what you are hearing. As strange as this might seem but it turns out to be very hard if not impossible to hear things you do not have words for! I don't know about the latest editions but in my first edition he compares learning to listen critically to learning to read an x-ray. In both cases everyone knows enough to sort of be able to tell what is going on. But the more you learn the less the x-ray looks like a lot of shades of gray. After you learn a lot of physics, anatomy and pathology eventually the flat x-ray looks almost 3D and you see so much more. This made a lot of sense even before I became an x-ray tech. Now I can say for sure he is right on. Highly, highly recommended! |
My favourites include: Sound Bites: 50 years of Hi-Fi News by Ken Kessler Ken’s travelogue never fails to captivate each time I return to it. A Pair of Wharfedales: The Story of Gilbert Briggs and His Loudspeakers by David Briggs A great historical read. Plenty of good photographs and an even handed tone. G.A.B. himself would have been pleased. Sound Reproduction by Gilbert Briggs An almost ancient tome in 2021 but rarely, if ever, have the fundamentals of audio been written with such clarity. Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms by Floyd Toole. This one’s more educational, and I’ve only read the 2nd edition, but there’s a lifetime of knowledge in these pages. |
In thee area of historical context I would recommend "Putting he Record Straght" the autobiography of John Culshaw. For the younger generation, JC joined Decca Records in 1946 and served as it's foremost producers of classical music through 1967, when he left Decca and ended up at the BBC. He was instrumental in assembling Deccas recording team for classical music as well as producing many of the greatest Decca recordings of that era. His autobiography is not a technical account but does provide a fascinating look at the growth and development of the record industry from its infancy to becoming a multimillion dollar industry. Topics include the birth of stereo recordings, personal recollections of artists of the time (HVK, Solti, Pavarotti, Neilson. Ansermet, Kubelik and others), and the economics and politics of producing recordings. This book may be difficult to find but is definitely worth finding/reading if classical recordings are of interest to you. |
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My problem with books is that 95% are crap. Even if you have access to a large library it can still take a lot of precious time to find something that connects. A bit like searching for new music. There is good stuff out there but you do have to wade through a lot of derivative dross. Even worse for movies. I guess almost everyone is chasing the dollar and following the formula. Thankfully not everyone though. |
I will correct you on this one... I taught reading analysis all my life... 😁😊 If you discover a great book and a deep one, it is like pulling on a thin wire attached to a thin cord which itself is connected to a thicker cable and so on... In any very great books there are notes and citations from other great books that this genius writer we have discovered will himself present to us by inviting us in his own commented bibliography in footer notes... ( one of the most unrecognized important part of a book is footer notes) It is the way very young i discovered many hundreds geniuses known or not so well known by myself... Generally though bad or not very great writer or philosopher dont have great or very original references ... A tip : look especially not well known author also in any bibliography... If you discover only ONE great book ,you will discover many other great one... For sure my observations is more apt to be used in science, philosophy, and other non fictional books...
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Here i will defend cd318... 😁😊 If you are about to die, because life is short, almost all books are not so much important... Save very few one.... My greatest endeavour when i was young was discovering illuminating books in any field at all cost...I lived like my life was depending of ONE book i did not know yet.... For example i bought a book in 1975 that sell in french 125 dollars of today...guess the actual inflated price to have an idea of this very high cost for one book only? In this book reading all my view of the world change... It was a book about Egyptology but the book change in one second all my understanding of the meaning of mathematics... Then one book can change your life in a way 95 % of the book could never do ... Reading is very important yes,but picking the RIGHT book is a question of life or death sometimes... Especially if we are young....Old people dont remember that....
We can think sometime that we are predestined to encounter a woman who we love...I think that it is the same for some predestined for us books... Imagine now that you had never read some important book...Do you feel the huge impact? If not i am sorry it only means that you have never encounter a life changing book...
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All 3 are very difficult subjects to write about. To this day I haven’t seen a better book on psychology than Eric Berne’s A Layman’s Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis. It’s the only one I remember out of the dozens I have read. I’ve yet to read a really good book on either Freud or Jung. What about hypnosis? Is there even a single decent book written about it? Henry Hazlitt’s Thinking as a Science is certainly a book I wish I’d read much earlier in life. As is Rolf Dobelli’s The Art of Thinking Clearly (which was impossible as it was only published in 2013). Both books are a distillation of an enormous amount of experience and knowledge gathered in an easy to read volume.
I’ve read dozens of books on the Beatles but Mark Lewisohn’s renders most of them redundant. Best book on Lennon? How about Albert Goldman’s The Many Lives of John Lennon? I’ve yet to read his book on Elvis but I’m hoping it will be more memorable than Peter Guralnick’s efforts. Heinrich Harrer’s 1959/64 book ’The White Spider’ remains my favourite book on mountaineering. When it comes to books on personal computers apart from Carey Holzman’s The Healthy PC (now sadly out of both print and date) I found nothing memorable.
What about novels? How many can you call truly great? Anna Karenina, A Christmas Carol, The Great Gatsby, The Trial, 1984, Tropic of Capricorn, Remembrance of Things Past, Young Man in the Sun, Tom Sawyer, The Rose (Charles L Harness), Wuthering Heights are the ones that immediately come to mind though I must have read hundreds. The vast majority of which I now have little recollection.
Life is too short and time is too precious to waste on books. Just like with audio playback, you want the very best that’s out there. It’s also very important to be able to put what you read into some form of practical use. There’s nothing wrong with reading for entertainment or escapism, and I should know, but just how many decent reads are out there when you have mostly mountains of dross being churned out on a daily basis. There’s also mountains of books being pulped and deleted forever everyday but sadly not all of them are dross either. We all might have different tastes, but what you read can really matter and make a difference.
Here’s a writer I’ve never read (along with Dostoevsky), but I’ve always liked this quote. "Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer." E.M. Forster, Howards End
Here’s another by our good friend @mahgister "If you are about to die, because life is short, almost all books are not so much important... Save very few one...."
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It's funny to me really. Robert Harleys book IS excellent, but what the Hell were they thinking by putting such corny cover right on the front? A cartoonish playboy on the couch with his girl and a drink. Well, I guess you would have to see it. I was going to get a newer copy of it anyway. Then, just as much to my surprise, is Jim Smith's box, which I also consider excellent for what it has to offer. Only this the whole damned thing has not very well drawn cartoons in it to 'help' with the descriptions/examples. In that case, I had also purchased the DVD thinking it might have another angle to offer from the book, but it was just the author standing there reading his book to you. I gave it away. Having these criticisms (yes minor, but annoying) I still would recommend BOTH books, as there are important facts to consider in each. It's not just about whether or not that you agree wholeheartedly with either, but that the points are mostly well made, and have helped considerably. |
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A little update. A few days ago, I received the 6th edition of Robert Harleys' Audio book. The reason that I prefer it is that new subjects are brought to light because of the passage of time and the advancing technology. It also includes definitions of audiophile terms that would help the newcomer. There is even more, BUT the cover is not as stupid looking as it once was. The copy that I got was slightly used and nearly perfect. $36ppd. |
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Sorry to bust up the party, but I have been reading books on physics, electricity, boilers and reducing crude oil. All from a 1936 set of thin books apparently intended to educate the common worker. The examples used were about horses, straw, and other common things of the time. The interesting part to me is how much of it still relates to present day audio. For example, the conductivity of various metals. According to the physics 'manual', silver is number1, followed by gold, then copper, IIRC. Then as far as metals being used for their heatsinking qualities, it goes away from what we think of to such metals as bitumen, lead, and sorry I don't remember the others. It's storming outside and the books are in my truck. Funny thing, aluminum isn't even mentioned as a heat sinking metal! They talk about cast iron (lousy heat sink) and brass, and few others. Suppose it all related to what they were using at the petroleum plant. |
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A couple of people I know recommended Bill Bryson to me. So out of respect I picked up his A Short History of Almost Everything and The Body.
They’re interesting enough, but so far nothing new. Apart from this following passage which has left me puzzled.
Extract from The Brain, chapter 4 of The Body p56.
"In a similar way, the brain manufactures all the components that make up our senses. It is a strange and non-intuitive fact of existence that photons of light have no colour, sound waves no sound, olfactory molecules no odour.
As British doctor and author James Le Fanu has put it, ’whilst we have the overwhelming impression that the greennes of the trees and the blueness of the sky are streaming through our eyes as through an open window, yet the particles of of light impacting on the retina are colourless, just as the waves of sound impacting on the eardrum are silent and scent molecules have no smell. They are all invisible, weightless, subatomic particles of matter travelling through space.’ All the richness of life is created inside your head. What you see is not what is, but what your brain tells you it is, and that’s not the same thing at all." ------
Even if everything is all interpretation, surely sound waves cannot be silent? Or can they?
Can someone please help me out here? |
If we supposed the waves touching the ears drum and many small fibers were not silent, what will be the use of a brain using the differential physical information coming from EACH ears ? Do you think the same "music" or information content reach the two ears at the same time? Music is pure meaning emerging from the hand coupled to a brain when a violonist play... But there is no music in the air....His hand and the string and his brain are in a silent resonant state which is meaningful to his consciousness...He called it music... And he "hear it" because he created it.... Without consciousness the world is not only silent it is dead... It does not exist... Materialism is more stupid ideology than astrology... A chain of clocks at all scales in a resonant state, interrelated, which is the basis of astrology has a meaning... An atom supposed to be real externally out of our own consciousness while colors in the rainbow are not real because they are inside our qualitative perceiving consciousness is the ridiculous stance of materialism beyond reason...Ask quantum physicist what is an atom of light ? But i know you already know all that... My best to you...
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