Handbook for Sound Engineers

In its first edition, this book referred to itself as "the new Audio Cyclopedia," as it was conceived as an update to Howard Tremaine's exhaustive reference of 1959, updated in 1969. Back in the mid-1980's, I read the first edition of Ballou's Handbook for Sound Engineers cover-to-cover, finding nearly all of it to be essential information for any audio professional. As one might expect from a book "written by a committee," some chapters were more engaging than others. The chapter on "Consoles and Systems" by Steve Dove was so entertaining, while sacrificing nothing in the way of technical substance, that it changed my thinking about what technical writing could be. While his chapter in the latest edition is somewhat more subdued, I could not be more satisfied with the thoroughness of the updating to represent today's state of the art technology. That statement also applies to the entire book - this is not a book that lives in the past, rests on past achievement, or rides on reputation. Suffice it to say that the latest edition is always my first recommendation for a technical reference book on audio. It belongs on the bookshelf of any facility audio department, as well as any serious audio practitioner in any of the specialties - live sound, recording, broadcast, theatre, etc. The world would have a lot less bad sound in it if more audio practitioners took seriously their responsibility to learn their technical fundamentals, and this book is one of the best places to start on the quest to achieve technical competence in audio.

This is the best book on audio I have seen. It covers a broad range of topics in great depth. The book goes into great detail about the following areas:a) human hearing and calculating the acoustic properties of roomsb) PCB-level electronic components c) system level componentsd) storage mediae) bringing all of the above together into applicationsThe book assumes the reader has a good foundation in electronics but explains concepts in a very unpretentious way. It's nothing like reading a scholarly journal where you constantly have to look at other articles and review textbooks to understand. If you understand the basics of electronic circuits you will understand this book without consulting other textbooks. Every audio topic I can think of is explored in this book. If you work on anything related to audio you absolutely should not be without this reference.

I have been playing around with amplifiers and recording equipment for a while now - never had formal education in audio engineering, but I do have some electronic background. This book has helped me a lot in refining my recording techniques, my audio system itself and furthered my understanding of audio systems from microphone placement to cabling, speaker placement, phono cartridge alignment to name but a few. Whatever subject I sought advice on, this book has so far provided me with the answers. I would go as far as saying that whatever this book does not cover is not relevant to audio systems. One word of caution though, this book is not like a "cookbook". You have to have an electronic background in order to make full use of the book - as the title rightly puts it, it is intended for engineers.