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Critical Listening Skills for Audio Professionalsx$28.92
  (11 reviews)
Best Price: $49.99 $28.92
Audio productions are made or broken by the quality of the recording engineer's ears. The ability to properly discern sounds, identify subtle problems, and act accordingly to apply the necessary fix makes all the difference in the quality of the final tracks and master. The good news is that these crucial skills can be learned. The ability to instantly identify frequencies, hear hidden distortions, and instinctively reconcile conflicts in the EQ of instruments, audio elements, vocals and more are traits of those who have mastered the art of audio production. The best engineers have trained their ears to immediately recognize audio problems that the consumer and those new to recording arts would likely not hear, but that, if left unresolved, would result in an amateurish final product. For more than two decades, students of F. Alton Everest's Critical Listening and Auditory Perception courses have rapidly developed these skills by using the intense lessons found in this book and on the CD. Unfortunately the books and CDs included with the course were usually too expensive for aspiring engineers to purchase and were often available only in colleges, universities, or school libraries. Now for the first time these indispensable training sessions are available with this release of Critical Listening Skills for Audio Professionals. Through hundreds of illustrations and an accompanying disc containing high-resolution MP3 files with nearly five hours of narration of the entire course, you can acquire the audio discernment skills of a seasoned recording engineer by studying this course at your own pace, in your own home.
UPC: 082039530239
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Customer Reviews
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Classic Book Updated and Inexpensive
By A1M8PP7MLHNBQB on 2006-08-15
This book starts out by saying that the maestro on the podium, the recording engineer, and the experienced music critic have suffieiently trained ears to judge if the sound quality of music is acceptable. The beginning student may well have ears that are just as good, perhaps even better, than these professionals. The student can hear, but doesn't know how to listen.
This book is on listening. It is based on the courses the author developed to teach listening. The first half of the book is on the training the ears to detecting the changes in sound frequency, level, band limitations, irregularities, distortion, noise, etc. The second part is more on the psychoacoustics, the human auditory system. Of particular interest in this section is the understanding of the part that perception plays in the hearing of sounds.
The CD included with the book contains some eighteen lectures that essentially make up a course in listening.
This book is based on and expanded from previous books from the author. These earlier books have long been out of print and difficult to find. This new edition has been updated and priced at a price anyone can afford.
A top pick for both students and aspiring audio engineers.
By A14OJS0VWMOSWO on 2006-10-15
The ability of the audio engineer to identify frequencies, hear hidden distortions and reconcile conflicts can make or break a career; but how can such skills be taught? Critical Listening Skills For Audio Professionals is one sure method for gaining expertise: it pairs an audio cd of high-resolution MP3 files containing nearly five hours of narration of the entire course with a text identifying critical listening skills. Students of the author's courses have tested and developed their own skills on the area based on the contents here, but the price tag is affordable enough for non-college aspiring pros to benefit from. A top pick for both students and aspiring audio engineers.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Definetely, the book for improving your audio listening skills!
By A21COLSSAMR1PY on 2008-05-02
This book contains some clear and self explanatory audio exercises. I hate to acknowledge that most of the exercises could have already been performed by using a 'free' (computer) tone generator to explore the different frequency ranges. Beware, it will require time to learn to listen properly. I was very wrong to believe that by listening to the contents once, I was set. I would suggest to make copies of use a separate sheet of paper to answers the exercises. This way you can repeat it, over and over. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in improving his/her audio listening skills.
*PROS:
-Good and helpful exercises
-Nice correlation between the audio exercises and the freq. graphs on the book.
-If you have no patience to play with a tone generator, this book is well suited for you.
*CONS
-The CD without the book or the book without the CD become useless.
-You need to read the book while you listen to the CD.
-The CD is in fact an MP3-CD, so you may not play it anywhere you want.
-I have the impression that the book is kind of expensive. Many of the exercises can already be performed by anyone using a (free) tone generator.
- The book is kind of bulky to take it anywhere.
GREAT SONIC WISDOM passed on to us
By A2WMH5CC0ZRYFA on 2007-10-03
Listen carefully !
If you are a Sound Engineer and you dont have a copy of this book, your
missing out on a lot.
This book is all about you and your EAR and how you perceive sound,
your expensive mixers and gadgets are of no use if you dont know
how to listen to the sound criticaly and deftly turn those nobs and slide those sliders on your mixers !
essential tool for all audio students
By A253BVM4P5ZJWJ on 2008-05-04
This book is acutally a compilation of two of Alton Everests ear training books. The first, Critical listening skills, plays different frequencies, amplitudes, bands, filters, amount of total harmonic distorion, and revervbs. Then you are forced to recognize changes within these different areas. These are crucial ear training skills for anyone trying to break into the world of audio. It's not somehting you can go through once and leave. The book should become part of a routine of ear training.
The second book, Auditory perception, discusses issues relating to the differences between how sound occurs and how we actually perceive it. Another valuable tool for understanding how sound works.
Aparantly this book has been around for a long time but was, until this edition, only available in very expensive editions that were catering toward institutions. This is done by puting the 6 cd's onto 1 mp3 cd. This is my one complaint about this book, that people trying to become audio pros shouldn't use compromised quality files when training there ears. That is why I use the cd's as a guide and for the projects that require more acurate listening I use a tone generator in my DAW to recreate the sounds at a higher quality.
All in all an excellent tool that has, in a short time, already proven very helpfull.
- Just what I needed
By A1RRMFJVM9E2Y on 2008-03-16
I am currently a student in mediaproduction and not too apt in the field of audio. Often I would come across examples in my textbooks on problems concerning EQ, audio levels, sounds masking eachother comb filter effect etc. My biggest problem is that I do not know what I should listen for. I haven't finished this book yet, but I still feel confident enough about in order to praise it in a review. This book is very good. Nice examples on the CD and very helpful. I do not know how useful it is for audio professionals, but for a student I think it is awesome.
In my first review I wrote that I thought the CD was sloppily made. In fact there was no trouble with the tracks, but since I did not realize that the CD contained mp3's rather than ordinary CD tracks my player read track 10 as track 2. Well, I dont know if I would trust mp3's as a listening reference (even if they have a very hight quality). I wish they could have used CD quality Wave files on a DVD instead. Still a helpful book, though.
- Save your money, it's a ripoff
By A7S921X3L93PP on 2008-03-02
The book comes with a cd. Mine didn't work, and book is useless without cd. I emailed publisher, waited a week to hear back, and they pretty much told me I was out of luck. What a ripoff.
- mp3 files on cd????
By AGB40Y1C4UNEG on 2008-05-29
i just tried to listen to the track lessons on my very expensive and revealing audio system, and to my surprise the tracks on the cd lessons are on MP3!!! WHAT??? a book made for critical listeners can't hear it on a high end cd player! i dont believe this. they have the nerve to say this in page 4: "if you cannot hear these extreme tones, it may be either the fault of your ears or the fault of you equipment" ....so my $20,000 cd player is responsible for not hearing you crappy mp3 files?
- The best course!!!
By AH9TG1522RVRV on 2007-12-28
i love it!!
This book is all about
develope your skills in order to make better determinations
about EQ,Comp,Reverb,etc./..
You have this natural skills in your brain
but you have to develope it steep by steep
this book is amazing for that!!!
- Zombie walking
By A32QWK7JHODEN3 on 2008-02-08
This is a reissue of two earlier publications from a distant era. An old school approach to ear training. The Psychoacoustic section is quite informative. My suggestion would be to pick it up - used.
There are some DVD-Rom software items out there. "Audio wizard pro ear trainning" is a neat little program if you can get past the "turbined, genie in a bottle" thing going on.
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