I saw this book in its finished form for the first time at the NAB show and was going to post about it, but I just realized that I forgot. I’m not going to do a book review here because I was involved in the publication – I was the technical editor – but I wanted to call your attention to the book since it’s on topic for this web site, it’s a good book, and I’m proud to be a part of making it happen.
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, Ethan was writing articles in Recording Engineer and Producer, one of the great audio trade magazines that is no longer. I built an acoustic polarity tester from one of his articles which I’m still using today.
In the late 1990s when I was writing regularly for Recording Magazine, I wrote an article about phase and polarity, and I thought about the polarity tester, located Ethan (who was writing software at the time), and asked if he would be willing to update that RE/P article as a do-it-yourself project to go along with my article. He agreed, and that, among other things, kick started him back into writing about audio and eventually starting up his acoustical materials company RealTraps.
A couple of years back, Ehtan started collecting articles and notes that he’d written, editing them, bringing them up to date, and the result was this book. It covers a lot of ground from the fundamental physics of audio, recording technology, how musical instruments work, MIDI, computer based recording, and of course acoustics (I don’t know how many times I suggested that he leave out “You can’t have too many bass traps” in the midst of an article). The Audio Expert is a very comprehensive book, a good read, and a good reference. Check it out at Focal Press. .
Mike Rivers - Useful Audio Stuff 