Sweetwater Press Digital Audio Explained: For the Audio Engineer Reviews

4.2/5.0 based on 3 customer reviews

Sweetwater Advice

Chuck Surack

This is a great book for anyone in the modern audio business. Nika's clear explanations make it easy for any audio engineer or musician to better understand digital audio and most importantly how to make better recordings.

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Customer Reviews

Reid Draper
from Ellicott City, MD
August 10, 2006Music Background:
Music Engineering and Computer Science Student

Knowledge is Power

Marketing lies in the audio business are as bad as any other. Find out for yourself the scientific truths about digital audio. Compared to other digital audio books, you will find this easy to read and wrap your head around. This book will certainly help you make better purchasing decisions, you might be surprised what you learn...

Simon Lindskog
from SWEDEN
October 5, 2011Music Background:
Musician and producer, Sound Engineering student.

Really good - if you read it through

This book takes the extremely complicated digital world and tries to describe it for the average audio engineer. The fundamentals are easy, as are the basics of the digital domain. Aldrich really explains on a level that is understandable for someone whos not that experienced with maths and digital programming. But later on when things get more complicated it can get really hard to grasp, so it is difficult to just finding your topic and read about it if you haven't read the rest of the book.

from
July 26, 2006

Smooth and Informative Read

I had some initial doubts about "Digital Audio Explained," as many books of this type tend to delve far too deep into algorithms and formulaic jargon while leaving out much of what the reader is looking for. However, Nika's book strikes an even balance between mathematical explanation and plain English understanding concerning a matter which confuses (often unwittingly) many musicians and engineers.

The entire book is laid out logically, with a clear progression from basic topics (such as understanding the basic waveform) to the more intricately advanced (such as digital signal processing). Detailed diagrams appear several times on nearly every page and provide a great visual aid to the complex subject matter. Of particular interest is the "Myths of Digital Audio" section, which covers fiercely debated and often misunderstood topics such as sampling rates, bit depths, and jitter. Keeping in line with the rest of the book, the topics are explained both mathematically and with basic language, so an understanding of what makes these topics tick comes quickly and easily. Overall, this book makes a great read when you find yourself entrenched in the complex workings of digital audio and would like to have at least some idea of how it all comes together.