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Home  Site Content Digital Domain Mastering Audio Reviews
More Reviews of Mastering Audio by Bob Katz
"Bob Katz is one of the few writers who are able to take a complex subject, riddled with difficult concepts and present those concepts for the layman to absorb, in a non-arrogant and cheerful manner."
AudioCourses.com
Bob Olhsson
Audio Mastery
Nashville Tennessee
Bob's book is a treasure. I think of it as sort of a core memory dump of everything Bob has learned about digital audio over the past 20+ years. For those of you who haven't known very much about Bob, I'd like to tell you a little. Bob was almost the first hard core analog guy I know of who didn't just accept "don't look behind the curtain because you wouldn't understand" when he didn't care for the sound of digital recording gear. Bob not only looked, he rolled up his sleeves, started modifying ill-designed products and began home-brewing his own digital gear when there were no acceptable commercial alternatives available.
He cares passionately about achieving rich, warm, high quality, analog-like results in the digital domain and his book is intended to teach everybody how to accomplish exactly that. I'm still feeling a bit embarrassed about all of the nice things he says about me in the book but keeping a copy by your side could easily kick the quality of your work up a few notches the same way access to his nuts and bolts digital know-how has improved my work over the past 8 years.
Den Hollinden
Denuine Records
Rosslyn, VA
Up until now, I've read books by authors who fall into one of the following categories:
1) musicians
2) traditional, primarily analog audio engineers
3) acoustic scientists or
4) audio computer applications specialists.
Getting meaningful information from one of these authors requires my own extrapolation into the remaining areas--or at least taking the authors comments in those areas with a grain of salt. FINALLY I have in my hands a book written by someone who can put it all together into a meaningful whole. The book is a wonderful blend of descriptions of how things work that will take you to the next level along with some very valuable common sense advice like how to effectively sequence songs into an album. I'll keep this book in my studio and refer back to it again and again. Probably the best (but also the most honest) thing I can say about the book is that I know I will sound better because of having read it.
Greg Simmons
Editorial Director
AudioTechnology Magazine
Australia
First of all, congratulations Bob! Mastering Audio is the most useful book on audio that I've seen in a long time. While the focus may appear to be on mastering, much of the information is applicable across the board (sic), as are the philosophies and recommended practices. There were many times while reading 'Mastering Audio' that I had a feeling of deja vu, because I'd read similar information and seen similar graphics in the many articles on Bob's digido website. Reading Bob's book has made me realise just how much I've learnt about high quality audio from his articles. I now remember stumbling across his website in the early 90s, when I was first getting involved in mastering and related areas, and even then it was abundant with important 'insider' information that put me on the path to audio righteousness.
In 'Mastering Audio', Bob has taken much of the valuable but disparate informationfrom his articles, refined it, updated it, expanded it, added entirely new topics, and somehow cleverly wrestled it into a single coherent whole. All the things he's been preaching for so long have been merged into one beautifully presented document that balances science with art, theory with practice, and facts with philosophies. And it all makes perfect sense. It's like having a virtual BK sitting in your bookshelf, complete with footnotes, pull quotes, and myth alarms. (Excuse my flowery prose...)
I know that many others have commented on Bob's book, but one aspect I haven't seen much mention of is the *design*. Visually, it is fabulous. Great choice of fonts, good choice of graphics, good use of the spot colour (orange) throughout, and printed on decent quality paper. Bob, I am so glad you had the wisdom to employ professional graphic artists and so forth. Someone with a good eye went to a lot of trouble fitting those design elements together to make a book that remains lively and informative without getting too busy.
I know that's a difficult juggling act, so please pass my appreciation onto the appropriate people. Even Edward Tufte would be impressed. 'Mastering Audio' is one of those rare books where everything comes together perfectly: great information, beautifully presented, easy to understand,and satisfying to read. Bob, YOU are the mensch of mastering!
P.S. The detachable hand-drawn Musical Pitch Relation Chart is an added bonus, definitely worth framing.
Matt Downing
London
This is a terrific book for everybody interested in mastering or working with audio at any other stage in the production process. It covers all sorts of concepts, explaining why they are important to understand and how to apply your knowledge. Once I have finished reading it first time, I will find it a great reference source when I need to be reminded about decibels, dithering, frequency ranges and a whole encyclopaedia of other topics. I won't even try to list all them all here, but suffice to say that if it is relevant to the quality of recorded audio, it is explained excellently in this book. Bob Katz clearly knows his subject inside out and is a patient, enthusiastic teacher. The book makes it clear that there are no quick answers to the question 'how do I master?' and there is a lot of densely packed technical information that some may find daunting. However, it is so well written that anybody with a genuine interest will find it enormously rewarding and will certainly learn a lot more than they would from any guide that tried to provide quick answers.
Some people talk about mastering as if it is a black art that mere mortals could never fully understand, whereas Bob Katz makes it clear that you can learn to do it well so long as you are prepared to learn a lot of theory and train your own ears. As much care has gone into the details of presentation as the editorial content. The pages are made of nice, thick paper, there are plenty of illustrations and even a lovely fold-out poster in the front illustrating the note-ranges of all the instruments in the orchestra. Having almost finished reading the book once, I have been amazed at how much I didn't know I needed to know, but I have also finally got a handle on many concepts I knew I didn't know well enough. The things I have learned in this book will immediately affect the way I work with audio right from recording, to editing, mixing and, of course, mastering.
Now check it out yourself! Purchase Mastering Audio by Bob Katz direct from Digital Domain!
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