Music Recording Equipments

I DID NOT START READING THE BOOK YET BUT IT WAS A AMAZON VERIFIED PURCHASE. THE BOOK WAS BOUGHT USED AT A FRACTION OF THE COST NEW,IT CAME WRAPPED LIKE IT WAS GLASS AND WAS IN PERFECT CONDITION AND ARIVED ON TIME YOU COULD NOT ASK FOR ANYTHING MORE!
Rating: 5 / 5

this book covers a lot of ground

but in doing so it does not cover anything in depth

and many things are covered poorly or omitted

in many places we are told to do something

but then referred to our manuals for our hardware & software although

sometimes he often provides a generic example but not always

if you know nothing at all

this will be a good introduction but

dont try to understand the details from this book

just try to grok the big picture (albeit slightly hazy)

then look for other books to fill in what you need

you will not be able to build and use your home studio with just this book as a guide

if you have experience with analog recording

andor a degree in electronics then you will be disappointed

but you may be able to figure out the gaps and confusing parts with some google searches – otherwise this will leave you with too many questions

full disclosure – i have recorded with analog tape and was a member of AES for several years as well as having 5 years of graduate school in EE — after many years of doing other things, i wanted to quickly get up to speed with the modern digital recording on pcs for my own use at home . this book was a start but not the answer.

overall i found this book annoying and inadequate

many terms are not explained

although

some are explained *after* they got used instead of before

there is no glossary of all terms for quick reference

the index does not always include a pointer to the section explainign them either

some terms are used in non standard ways – which may reflect the current usage by the public but not engineers and

some are new jargon (eg midi stuff) that was not used in days of analogue

but

some usages are just plain wrong. however some others may be just careless use of english or bad editing and some are possibly just the authors misconceptions.

many diagrams are on the opposite side of the page referencing them

which makes the book much harder to use

diagrams are confusing and not intuitive

and need better explanations of what they are supposed to tell us

reference material is omitted. he tells us that middle c is coded as 60decimal in midi format but fails to give a diagram with all the possible notes/codes.

other items are missing like a table of the mystery codes that got mentioned in passing but never described (that i could find; and they are not indexed)

he throws out things like midi codes without explaining them and they are NOT in the index at all and which is poorly done.

I have a list of about 15 terms/jargon that he used that i need to google to find out what they mean. I also have a number of questions that i will ahve to research. these should have been covered in the book!!

some words are thrown out to show his music experience as they have little relevance to the topic at hand. maybe you know what a dobro is ,but most of us dont — and we have no need to know it either (but appears to be some sort of specialised percussive instrument. and hints on recording ti are not appropriate in this book.

this book is copyright 2009 which is why i bought it

else i would suggest looking at

jeffs pc recording studio for dummys instead

but that one is sadly out of date

and may well suffer from the same editing/production problems as thsi one

but i have only glanced at the TOC and copyright date so far

this one covers too much non pc recording options (stand alone disk and all_in_one non_PC related hardware devices) which is a total waste these days, but could possibly be justified in this book but not the pc recording studio book done in 2004 (copyright 2005) which needs to be updated real soon now or any book that covers PC music which is the only viable alternative circa 2009. such Stand alone options are only marginally cheaper and are much harder to use and inflexible.

it covers too much miking of drums (author used to be a drummer!) and is way too light on explaining PC interface devices.

he should cover more about sound cards and how they fit in the big picture and less on making your own sound panels. i am interested in PC music not carpentry.

there are probably better books out there

(it is hard to imagine worse but i have seen some! so caveat emptor)

but i have not looked for better intros yet

i grabbed this one at the local borders on impulse because i was there

and wanted to read something on this topic right away. this was the least worst of their paltry selection. and to be fair, i learned some thigns, and relearned some things i had not used for years. but it did not live up to what i expected in such a book.

search amazon for PC music not home recording and you will likely come up with more appropriate books.

Rating: 2 / 5

I picked up this book after being interested in trying PC recording for months. I had previously tried browsing the internet, searching forums, etc, to figure out where to get started – if anything, I just found myself more confused. The recording industry uses alot of technical jargon, and that’s exactly what this book doesn’t do. It assumes you know very little and presents the information in an easy-to-understand format.

The only reason I didn’t give it five stars was because I felt like there could have been more information added to the book. Granted, it is a book for beginners who want to get started, but I still felt like it was a bit sparse in parts. Still, though, it’s a great read for anyone interested in PC recording, and it’ll definitely save you alot of headaches and money.
Rating: 4 / 5