A review of O'Reilly's book, Digital Audio Essentials
by Steve Ackerman
posted 2006-01-12

O'Reilly's recent release, Digital Audio Essentials: A Comprehensive Guide to Creating, Recording, Editing, and Sharing Music and Other Audio was written by Bruce and Marty Fries to aid anyone from a newbie to the computer geek, and everyone in-between. It provides a straightforward approach to teaching the common terms and concepts used with digital audio including an introduction to many popular software packages. Digital Audio Essentials is a well-written overview with just enough detail and practical how-tos to help you to enter into the wonderful world of digital audio, limiting the amount of pain. The book features many clearly worded sidebars that display many interesting notes like "A Digital Music Timeline." Even many of the more computer-savvy power-users might learn something they didn't know in here.

Digital Audio Essentials addresses many concepts that should be thoroughly understood if you plan to use digital audio effectively. The book is well-organized and clearly laid out into five distinct sections. The first two sections, Going Digital, and Listening to Digital Music, answer many of the more basic questions about digital music. The third chapter even goes over many different ways to connect your computer to your stereo. It covers many practical solutions to effectively distribute music throughout your house including connections, and analog vs. digital cabling, wireless audio transmitters and wireless networks.

The three mainstream media players (iTunes, Windows Media Player and Reel Player) are thoroughly covered in section two as well as the relative merits of both OSX and Windows operating systems. This book also touches on online music stores including Apple's iTunes music store, eMusic, Napster 2.0, Rhapsody and many of the independent music stores including as CD Baby, Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA) and GarageBand.com to name a few.

Chapters in section three cover the "Nuts and Bolts of Digital Audio" including a look at many of the digital audio file formats. The book briefly touches on many of the different compression technologies but doesn't provide quite enough detail to really understand the methodologies behind them with the exception of Apple's AAC format and Microsoft's WMA format.

While section four provides readers with a greater level of detail, the content remains friendly throughout. This section covers the techniques used to capture and edit audio samples, making your own MP3 files, and digitizing your records and tapes including noise elimination and equalization to create sound files with the highest possible audio quality.

Section five begins with an in depth introduction to recordable media located in chapter 15. From CDs, DVDs and Rewritable media to media burning software, this chapter covers this topic thoroughly. Section five includes detailed chapter on setting up an Internet radio station but lacks any information about Podcasting. I expect that will be added in the next edition.

With the rise of the many RIAA lawsuits and the fall of many peer-to-peer networks, it is refreshing to see the book close with an extensive discussion about Digital Audio copyright laws, incorporating some amusing hypothetical case studies into the final chapter. Definitely an enjoyable and informative read but missing some important information. Overall, the book really is an indispensable reference for music enthusiasts, digital archivists, and amateur or independent musicians alike.

I was however, disappointed to find only a minimal amount of information about music on Linux or any of the more popular Open Source audio compression alternatives and other Open software options in this book. I was expecting to find more information regarding the lossless FLAC and APE formats, and especially the lossy, OGG format. Even the more popular Open Source media players like mPlayer, VLC and XMMS went without mention. I believe more effort should have been taken to discuss the Open format alternatives, vendor/format lock-in and the pros and cons of using DRM media in greater detail. Hopefully many of these shortcomings will be addressed in a future edition.

Digital Audio Essentials
O'Reilly Media, Paperback
Published April 2005
357 pages
ISBN 0596008562

About the Authors

Bruce Fries self-published the MP3 and Internet Audio Handbook and several other titles. He is a writer, technology consultant and entrepreneur, as well as an associate of the Audio Engineering Society, and founder of several high-tech companies. Bruce has been interviewed as an expert on a variety of digital audio topics, including the Napster vs. the RIAA lawsuits.

Marty Fries is a technology consultant who has been involved with computers for over 30 years. He has worked as audio engineer, toured nationally for a major record label mixing live sound, and has designed and built stereo equipment. He plays piano and organ for The Cutouts Blues Band, and lives in Laurel, Maryland.