Perfecting Sound Forever: The Story of Recorded Music: Amazon.co.uk: Greg Milner: Books

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Product Description

Review

'The story of recorded music has perhaps never been so captivatingly told as in this history' - Waterstone's Books Quarterly
--Review

'Lively, passionate and ever-questioning ... this is an accessible, well-informed and unique perspective' - Record Collector --Review

'Milner's appreciation of music is wide and deep ... and he provides illuminating answers to questions that are poorly understood' - Guardian --Review

'A breathless, surprisingly thrilling rollercoaster ride through the history of recorded music ... a-tour-de-force'
- Mail on Sunday --Review

'A work of great stylistic charm that never loses its pleasing balance between facts and human interest'-
Daily Telegraph --Review

'Fascinating ... a rich blend of commerce, ideology, technology and creativity' - Sunday Times
--Review

Review

'An epic study ... Greg Milner has been nothing if not meticulous' - The Times

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Customer Reviews

34 Reviews

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
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Average Customer Review

3.9 out of 5 stars (34 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sound affects, 1 Sep 2009

By	Aja "drumbo41" (Newbridge, Midlothian) - See all my reviews

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This absorbing book, which maps the history of recorded music from Edison's wax cylinders to the MP3
generation, is clearly a work of heart.
Greg Milner is occasionally in danger of being engulfed by his own enthusiasm, and wandering into
dark territory inhabited by obsessives, as he charts the frustrations, triumphs and more frequently
disasters of those who aimed to nail the purity of sound. The story of the early pioneers is
exhilirating but ultimately heartbreaking as it dawns on them that their dream - to capture an
accurate phonographic record of a performance - is doomed by the limitations of their equipment.
High-flown principles of the musical revolution are gradually eroded as the format wars - wax
cylinder to early vinyl to electro-magnetic tape to CD - allied with the growing commercial market
begin to dictate the way forward.
Unlikely heroes emerge: Emory Cook, the audiophiles' audiophile who as far back as the mid-1950s
witheringly declared that true high fidelity simply could not be accomplished; reggae producer King
Tubby, who unwittingly stumbled across the power of reverb, invented the remix and almost
single-handedly paved the way for rap, hip-hop and techno; British loudspeaker designer Gilbert
Briggs, who gleefully demolished the fanciful notion that any recording could ever possess the power
and dynamic of a live performance.
Milner also charts the heroic struggles of young, talented producers to make the best of the limited
resources at their disposal - trying to mix on two-track machines, more incredibly trying to work
their magic so that the music sounded good even as it crackled out of tinny radio speakers.
But he also shows that the sudden explosion of high-tech equipment in the 1980s and 90s, which
should in theory have been music to the hard-pressed producers' ears, contained within it the seeds
of its own destruction, as the search for sound's Holy Grail - presence - became the first casualty
of what he calls "the loudness war".
It is here that Milner's genius flourishes. At last he nails the question that has vexed so many
since the invention of the compact disc - Neil Young and Bob Dylan most notably among them: why does
a format that has a far greater dynamic range than vinyl fail so often to sound as good?
In a nutshell: compression. Severely compressed recordings sound louder than those carefully
mastered, and in today's world of headphone listening fool the brain into thinking that loudness =
better, leading to such horrors as the Red Hot Chilli Peppers' hideously distorted "Californication"
album (Milner calls them: "the band that clipped themselves to death").
Less is more of course. And here is a further paradox that clearly bewilders Milner: how can a
file format that strips out most of the sound end up sounding better than the CD original? Rigorously
conducted scientific tests show that the AAC format, encoded at 128 kbps, beats almost everything
else hands down - to Milner's dismay, one suspects.
This is a splendid book, and one anyone with even a passing interest in musical history would be
well advised to pick up. Here's my one caveat, and the reason I docked it a star: Milner simply
can't hide his love for vinyl; but I grew up with vinyl, and suffered too often at its hands - the
warps, clicks, sticks and jumps - to have any fondness for it as a format, or indeed any
illusions about its usefulness.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A definitive history of recorded music, 17 Jul 2009

By	Jimbo Starr (UK) - See all my reviews

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As other reviewers have pointed out, it is surprising that no-one has written a book exactly like this before.

Greg Milner sets out to tell the story of recorded music and whets the appetite as early as the Intro chapter with the story of the phonautograph which was built by Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville in 1857. It used a stylus attached to a vibrating diaphragm to etch patterns on a rotating glass cylinder covered in carbon. This preceded Edison's phonograph, and it's amazing to discover that in 2008 scientists actually found a way to play some of Scott's phonautographs! This is just one small example of knowledge that I gained from "Perfecting Sound Forever".

I also gained a much greater understanding of what I'm actually listening to in modern music and that alone was worth reading the book for. The book is very technical at times and, again as mentioned by other reviewers, some of this did go over my head. But it is also very readable and I'm glad that I stuck with it through some of the more challenging passages.

Tracing recorded sound all the way through to modern digital techniques, the book is filled with a lot of input from people in the music business and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about the development of recorded music - it certainly gave me a tremendous insight into how it all happened.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Point proven, but no alternative given, 7 Sep 2009

By	Klingsor (London, UK) - See all my reviews

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Greg Milner is very passionate about music he likes and how he likes to listen to it. The (unfairly) simplistic premise of this book would be "Analog/LP = Good, Digital/CD = Bad". And he turned almost every stone around America to prove his point, from Edison's single minded-obsession with improving the recorded sound quality to explaining in detail how modern, internet based compression formats are destroying the sound we now listen on a daily basis.

It is rather obvious that he had his mind made up long before he started researching for this book. Warmth, wittiness and houmor of his writing about early days of cylinders and vinyls turns quickly into bitter sarcasm every time he mentions CDs, and Digital seems to be a dirty word for him. Artistic and technological advancements in Europe are largely overlooked, except when they are either nicked or exported over the Atlantic. I couldn't stop wandering, if by any chance CD wasn't invented by an European and a Japanese company, would it fair a bit better in his views?

Accounts of audio developments are detailed and to the point, but some might find them too technological. Milner wastes no efforts to prove his point - that since the 80s over-produced and over-compressed rock and pop music doesn't sound 'natural' any more, exclusively due to digital recording technology and digital sound processing. But when he gets to explain why do we suffer from a digital fatigue, he is still exclusively focused on rock and pop. Classical music is barely mentioned, and even then, Leopold Stokowsky is painted as a charlatan and Herbert von Karajan wrongly(!) labeled as 'Hitler's favorite conductor'. And that's it. Naturally created sound doesn't seem to exist in Milner's recorded world, but it was far easier proving that already artificially created sound of rock and pop music sounds equally artificial when recorded and reproduced. And the fact that Philips and Sony already fixed all shortcomings that 'dirty' CD made such an inadequate sound carrier is also barely mentioned - there are only two passing references about Super Audio CD in the whole book, but nothing about its capabilities to sound like a good old LP.

Everything concerned, this is an interesting read. If you have more than a passing interest in sound technology, this is a must. The unique selling point of Milner's writing should be his ability to build up a very convincing theoretical analysis out of historical narrative. And, at the end of the day, you can agree or disagree with some of his points, but the fact remains that the commercial need for a quick musical buck lowered the sound quality of the (rock and pop) music we listen today to an equivalent of a cold pizza - digestible only if you're desperate.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars damning digital
The chapters on digital technology will have you running sobbing back to your beloved vinyl - unless like me you sold most of it and bought the CDs! Read more

Published 9 days ago by D. Moseley

4.0 out of 5 stars Not perfect, but enjoyable and aptly written.
I didn't quite know what to expect when ordering this book, but as a lifelong audiophile I found it very interesting and enjoyable to read. Read more

Published 15 days ago by C. Strachan

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing book
This is IMHO a very poorly structured book, filled with too many tiny irrelevant details you have to read before the author gets to the point. Read more

Published 1 month ago by S. J. C. Stevens

4.0 out of 5 stars Not perfect...
...but a very worthy attempt at covering such a massive field. That's selling Greg Milner and this excellent book somewhat short though, it's probably the best condensed history... Read more

Published 1 month ago by S. Lindgren

4.0 out of 5 stars Explains what I have been hearing since 1995
If, like me, back in the mid 1990's you noticed a difference in the way pop music sounds then this is definately the book for you. Read more

Published 1 month ago by A. Gulliver

4.0 out of 5 stars Very stylish writing, enjoyable
A thick book about the history and development of sound recording and all its technical aspects is potentailly rather a dry read. But this isn't. Read more

Published 2 months ago by David B

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting
I found this book difficult to read. It contains many fascinating anecdotes that fans of recorded music will love but at times it feels like a Tolkien novel. Read more

Published 3 months ago by Mr. Jonathan Clark

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating reading for anyone interested in recorded music
I jumped at the chance to read this book because being of a certain age I've experienced recorded music in several formats - vinyl, tape, CD and MP3 - and I thought it would be... Read more

Published 3 months ago by Tealady2000

3.0 out of 5 stars Forever is a long long time
I've read a good few books on the history of sound recording - Gellatts "The Fabulous Phonograph", "From Tin Foil To Stereo" and found them entertaining and informative. Read more

Published 3 months ago by R. A. Caton

4.0 out of 5 stars Think you know how music works? Think again.Read this book to discover how recorded sound really works.
This is a complex and challenging read, full of technical detail regarding the recording process. Heavy going, you might be tempted not to bother. Don't be discouraged. Read more

Published 3 months ago by M. W. Hatfield

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	94% buy the item featured on this page: Perfecting Sound Forever: The Story of Recorded Music 3.9 out of 5 stars (34) �8.00
	2% buy The Blue Moment: Miles Davis's Kind of Blue and the Remaking of Modern Music 4.5 out of 5 stars (2) �8.96
	1% buy The Long-player Goodbye: The Album from Vinyl to IPod and Back Again 5.0 out of 5 stars (1) �6.72
	1% buy Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age 4.0 out of 5 stars (3) �6.34

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