Technical References

[Ken Andrew]

The ear is an extraordinary sensory organ. Two books to introduce how and why you hear:

The Physics and Psychophysics of Music: An Introduction by Juan G. Roederer:
The 2nd edition has much (Year 12) physics and a little bit of anatomy. More into the accoustics than biology. Covers how sounds are generated and heard.

Bases of Hearing Science by John D. Durrant and Jean H. Lovrinic (Paperback - Jan 15, 1995)
A lot of anatomy and a little bit of (Year 12) physics. The biology is thoroughly dissected into what happens to sound after it hits your ears. You will never stick anything in your earhole again once you realise how delicate it is on the other side.

Both books have absolutely nothing about loudspeakers.

[1audiohack]

Handbook For Sound Engineers 4th edition. The Acousic Measurement and Small Room Acoustic chapters are really good. 10-2008

Some of my favorites not yet listed.

Sound System Engineering by Don Davis and Eugene Patronis, JR. 3rd edition 2006. The Audio and Acoustic Measurement chapter is great, one of the best explanations of how to use the Nyquist plot and its dimensionaly expanded variant, the Heyser Spiral.

Don Davis worked with many of the greats in audio and had a hand in shaping audio as we know it today, he is also the Father of SynAudCon. Eugene Patronis, JR. is Professor of Physics, Emeitus Georgia Institute of Technology. They are both fun to read.

Time Delay Spectrometry, an Anthology of the Works of Richard C. Heyser on Measurement Analysis and Perception.

Its a pitty, Richard's remarkable insight and his work is so often copied, and so seldom acknowledged. These are the writings from the man who really put it all together. Prior to Heyser, real life data from manufactures was usually frequency vs. level responses and rarely phase response. Cancer took him in 1987 I believe, the depth of his works are still not fully realized.

If you really want to dig into how and why loud speakers behave as they do, and how to "correctly" (read and you'll see) measure them, I believe this is the book.

On the fun side, The Human Side of Engineering by Alger. 1972
Tales of General Electric Engineering OVer 80 Years. From about 1885 or so. Very cool!

I hope to find something like it about Bell Labs in the hey-day. Anyone know of some?