Bibliography for beginners

Set up as you are describing it, I really have no idea

Maybe I'm missing the point because it might be too technical (for the topics it covers), but I'll try: "Learning the technique of sound" by Marco Sacco.

I have only read the first 3/4 chapters and then I gave up (for the moment), so I haven't reached the practical part, but I find it quite fluid and simple in its explanations.

http://www.micromindproject.it/pdf/CORSO%20TECNICO%20DEL%20SUONO.pdf

I already knew the text that Umberto recommended to you. Honestly, I don't like it because it doesn't treat topics in depth, starting from hypotheses to mathematically arrive at a thesis. It might be a decent formula book but nothing more; furthermore, it seems to me that you wrote wanting a book that speaks more about the musical aspects of recording. In this field, I don't think there is much; the only thing to do is enter a recording studio, stay there for about a year, and start understanding how professionals approach musicians to try to understand their needs and satisfy them—this is the most important part. In reality, there are a myriad of texts on recording, but 95% of them are all in English. All these books have a very technical approach. Some summarize the basic mathematical formulas of acoustics; the truth is that sound must be treated in an engineering way to properly understand what lies beneath and perform the problem-solving work typical of an engineer's role, also because the acoustic result is the last step of an enormous chain that ranges from electronic engineering and computer science to psychoacoustic sciences and the acoustics of environment construction. I have many books, from the simplest to the most technical; if you want, I can lend you some to see how you get on with them, perhaps we can talk about it in private.

TheSimon, you have confirmed a feeling of mine: the studio aesthetic is made in the studio :-) it's an excellent premise :-)

let's say that my doctoral project is evolving, and now I am starting from this: opera as an audio product. I will be forced to understand a bit more about technical issues, but the goal remains nonetheless to understand what aesthetic lies at the base of a sound engineer's choices when they have to "package" a box set

Certain things must necessarily be done in a studio because there is no text that can make you understand things without being able to listen to them, and many times the nuances are so subtle that even if a CD of examples were attached to a text, you wouldn't be able to hear them without the listening experience provided by a studio. Listening is something FUNDAMENTAL. This is why studio monitor speakers can cost up to 30,000 euros per pair. The reason is truly simple: they allow you to reproduce all frequencies with a linear response, so everything can be heard. This cannot be separated from acoustic treatment of the room, because if the speakers sound good but there are resonances and/or cancellations present in the room, then the 30,000 euros spent on the monitors become perfectly useless (We are talking about main monitors). Nearfields should then be added. As far as I know, in professional studios—and I have visited many—everyone has Yamaha NS-10s, which are terrible monitors, but if once the mix is done on the mains and it sounds good also on the NS-10s, then it sounds good everywhere. If we are talking instead about mastering and/or restoration studios, things change because the equipment is something that sits between pro and hi-fi. Speaking of aesthetics, everything depends on what the musician seeks. One cannot ignore the very close relationship between the musician and the engineer. The musician does not want to hear talk about frequencies, positioning, techniques, and theories; the musician has a reference sound in their head, often incorrect; the engineer is the one who must optimize the work to give the image of the sound in the musician's head, and he knows how to do it. It often happens, as I was saying, that the sound desired by the musician is not "right," and by "right" I mean in relation to the masters of the same genres already on the market. Sometimes it can be a choice, so in some cases "the donkey is tied where the master wants," while in other cases, when as I said, a close relationship is established between musician and engineer, the engineer can propose sounds, obtained also from proper microphone positioning, and create differentiation. Other times, solo musicians arrive in the studio already knowing a standard, even if they know nothing about series positioning: "I have always recorded with this microphone because I like its sound." In this case, the engineer's task (if they mean that type of microphone) is greatly reduced since the placement consists "only" in searching for the instrument's snap point, which varies from musician to musician and from instrument to instrument.

If we talk about recording, then there are various techniques...

There is a famous company—whose name escapes me right now—that performs recordings using only two microphones. The results are incredible because instead of using multiple appropriately positioned microphones while keeping the instruments in a random position influenced only by the visual aspect between musicians (e.g., the bassist must be able to see the drummer, the guitarist must see the bassist, etc.), the microphones are fixed and the position of the instruments is varied to define a focal point upon which the general sound is balanced on the microphone capsules. The microphone furthest forward has a cardioid polar configuration. Immediately behind it, another microphone is inserted in an eight-pattern configuration, also called bidirectional. Consequently, the first microphone will provide the front image, and the second will give us the ambience; there is also a technique to widen the stereo spectrum once the recording is made, which I won't go into detail about here. However, this microphone technique is truly difficult to implement because it requires very advanced theoretical knowledge of acoustics, and for this reason, it is not aimed at amateurs. Then there would be all the discussions regarding the audio chain of preamplifiers and signal routing. There is a world of electronics and computer science to tell, and a forum is the least adequate place for it.

Many believe, as with music in general, that the skills to be acquired are simple. They do not realize that one must have skills in electronics, computer science, and acoustics, and all are linked together in order to obtain a sound that pleases the ear.

I would like a discussion to open here in the forum aimed at the many topics concerning not only music but also sound. If there are questions, I am willing to answer them, if I am capable, that is...

It is all very fascinating, alas I have so little knowledge of acoustic physics (and so little aptitude for understanding mathematical subjects) that I can only approach the subject in an "intuitive" way. I will try to fill some gaps; today I finished reading "Rumore Bianco" by Cremaschi and Giomi http://www.amazon.it/Rumore-bianco-Introduzione-musica-digitale/dp/8808166007 which is an introduction that has already opened up some insights for me. Above all, it gave me an overview of the problems. As soon as possible I will go to the library to look through some things, then I will propose some topics for reflection to you/all

Very interesting topic and a great section!

Updates:

1) my project continues and one day I will tell you about it;

2) I have done some bibliographic research and found everything. Biographies of great audio producers (John Culshaw and Peter Andry), various references from illustrious musicologists to the "necessity" of a musicology of the audio product (Jean Molino in an essay in J.J. Nattiez's encyclopedia of music, "Technology, globalization, tribalization");

3) the subject is considered absolutely avant-garde, but since 2007 there has been an online journal, ASARP www.arpjournal.com/content/issue-1, which explicitly deals with the artistic implications of audio production. On behalf of the founders of the association, Frith S. and Zagorski-Thomas S., a book was also released in 2012, "The Art of Record Production", which should be an introduction to the subject created by collecting some significant articles from the journal.

I advise you to send an email to the AES (Audio Engineering Society) requesting temporary access, perhaps for a month, aimed at completing your thesis. There is quite a lot of important material from which you could draw ideas.

if the project goes through, I will certainly pester you :-) for now I mainly need bibliographic references, in order to develop a killer project