Audio Production and Critical Listening

Audio Production and Critical Listening: Technical Ear Training develops your critical and expert listening skills, enabling you to listen to audio like an award-winning engineer.

Featuring an accessible writing style, this revised edition includes substantial new content on parametric equalization and tonal balance, spatial audio and reverberation, dynamics processing, distortion and noise, analysis of sound recordings, as well as updated sections on headphone recommendations, hearing conservation, and new everyday ear training exercises. The interactive web browser-based technical ear training software modules provide endless opportunities to practice identifying various types of signal processing and manipulations across a range of difficulties. Working alongside the clear and detailed explanations in the book, this software completes the learning package that will help you train your ears to listen and really “hear” the technical details of your recordings through each stage of production and post-production. This all-new edition has been updated to include access to integrated software that promotes listening skills development through audio examples found in actual recording and production work, suggestions for progressive equalizer training exercises, and new analyses of recordings examples in a range of diverse genres.

This is an ideal textbook for undergraduate students in music production, audio engineering, and sound design courses, as well as novice producers and engineers honing their critical listening skills for audio.

Jason Corey, Ph.D., is Professor of Performing Arts Technology and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, where he teaches technical ear training and critical listening, and sound recording and production. He is active as a recording, mixing, and editing engineer, and is the co-author of Virtual Reality Audio: A Guide to Immersive Sound in Virtual Experiences. He holds Ph.D. and M.Mus. degrees in Sound Recording from McGill University.

David H. Benson is a software developer and audio researcher with a Ph.D. in Sound Recording from McGill University. His work has been supported by the Quebec government’s Fund for Research on Society and Culture (FQRSC) and the Audio Engineering Society Educational Foundation (AESEF). In 2011 he was named the AESEF’s John Eargle scholar, an honor recognizing excellence in both technology and music. As a pedagogue, he was granted the Schulich School of Music of McGill University’s first Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award.