Zero Decibels

Have our noise-soaked lives driven us mad? And is absolute silence an impossible goal—or the one thing that can save us? A lively tale of one man’s quest to find the grail of total quiet.--- “ I don’t know at what point noise became intolerable for me,” George Michelsen Foy writes as he recalls standing on a subway platform in Manhattan, hands clamped firmly over his ears, face contorted in pain. But only then does Foy realize how overwhelmed he is by the city’s noise and vow to seek out absolute silence, if such an absence of sound can be discovered. Foy begins his quest by carrying a pocket-sized decibel meter to measure sound levels in the areas he frequents most—the subway, the local café, different rooms of his apartment—as well as the places he visits that inform his search, including the Parisian catacombs, Joseph Pulitzer’s “silent vault,” the snowy expanses of the Berkshires, and a giant nickel mine in Canada, where he travels more than a mile underground to escape all human-made sound. Along the way, Foy experiments with noise-canceling headphones, floatation tanks, and silent meditation before he finally tackles a Minnesota laboratory’s anechoic chamber that the Guinness Book of World Records calls “the quietest place on earth,” and where no one has ever endured even forty-five minutes alone in its pitch-black interior before finding the silence intolerable. Drawing on history, science, journalistic reportage, philosophy, religion, and personal memory, as well as conversations with experts in various fields whom he meets during his odyssey, Foy finds answers to his questions: How does one define silence? Did human beings ever experience silence in their early history? What is the relationship between noise and space? What are the implications of silence and our need for it—physically, mentally, emotionally, politically? Does absolute silence actually exist? If so, do we really want to hear it? And if we do hear it, what does it mean to us? According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 30 million Americans suffer from environment-related deafness in today’s digital age of pervasive sound and sensory overload. Roughly the same number suffer from tinnitus, a condition, also environmentally related, that makes silence impossible in even the quietest places. In this respect, Foy’s quest for silence represents more than a simple psychological inquiry; both his queries and his findings help to answer the question “How can we live saner, healthier lives today?” Innovative, perceptive, and delightfully written, Zero Decibels will surely change how we perceive and appreciate the soundscape of our lives.

FX introduces today's up and coming musician to the fantastic creative potential of the most popular instrument today- the home studio. Explaining the basic and advanced signal processing techniques used in professional music production (EQ, compression, delay, reverb etc), using real world popular music examples and an emphasis on the perceptual results and musical value of these effects, FX teaches the Recording Musician how to achieve professional production standards and maximise their creative potential. The accompanying website www.soundfx-companion.com includes audio exaples of FX featured in the book. Features: A chapter dedicated to each key effect: Distortion Equalization Compression and Limiting Delay Expansion and Gating Pitch Shift Reverb Volume More than 100 line drawings and illustrations. Accompanying website featuring examples of all FX covered in the book. Discography of FX at the end of each relevant chapter. From the Sound FX Intro: The most important music of our time is recorded music. The recording studio is its principle musical instrument. The recording engineers and music producers who create the music we love know how to use signal processing equipment to capture the work of artists, preserving realism or altering things wildly, as appropriate. While the talented, persistent, self-taught engineer can create sound recordings of artistic merit, more productive use of the studio is achieved through study, experience and collaboration. This book defines the technical basis of the most important signal processing effects used in the modern recording studio, highlights the key drivers of sound quality associated with each, shares common production techniques used by recording engineers with significant experience in the field, references many of the touchstone recordings of our time, and equips the reader with the knowledge needed to comfortably use effects devices correctly, and, more importantly, to apply these tools creatively.

Sounds and Perception is a collection of original essays on auditory perception and the nature of sounds - an emerging area of interest in the philosophy of mind and perception, and in the metaphysics of sensible qualities. The individual essays discuss a wide range of issues, including the nature of sound, the spatial aspects of auditory experience, hearing silence, musical experience, and the perception of speech; a substantial introduction by the editors serves to contextualise the essays and make connections between them. This collection will serve both as an introduction to the nature of auditory perception and as the definitive resource for coverage of the main questions that constitute the philosophy of sounds and audition. The views are original, and there is substantive engagement among contributors. This collection will stimulate future research in this area.

Written in clear and accessible language, Occupational Hearing Loss provides a comprehensive overview of the hazards of occupational noise exposure, causes of hearing loss, testing of hearing, criteria to distinguish occupational hearing loss, and more. This third edition features expanded discussion of topics such as autoimmune inner ear disease and diagnosing occupational hearing loss. It includes new chapters on auditory evoked potentials, sudden sensorineural hearing loss, malignancies of the ear, otologic complications of scuba diving, and hearing in dogs. This text also contains updated and revised material on auditory processing disorders, systemic causes of hearing loss, and more.

If a spinning disk casts a round shadow does this shadow also spin? When you experience the total blackness of a cave, are you seeing in the dark? Or are you merely failing to see anything (just like your blind companion)? Seeing Dark Things uses visual riddles to explore our ability to see things that do not reflect light. Shadows and holes are anomalies for the causal theory of perception, which states that anything we see must be a cause of what we see. This requirement neatly explains why you see the front of a book's jacket and not its rear when you look at it face-on. However, the causal theory has trouble explaining how you manage to see the black letters on its surface. The letters are made visible by the light they fail to reflect rather than by the light they reflect. Nevertheless, Roy Sorensen defends the causal theory of perception by treating absences as causes. His fourteen chapters draw heavily on common sense and psychology to vindicate the assumption that we perceive absences. Seeing Dark Things is philosophy for the eye. It contains fifty-nine figures designed to prompt visual judgment. Sorensen proceeds bottom-up from observation rather than top-down from theory. He regards detailed analysis of absences as premature; he hopes a future theory will refine the pictorial thinking stimulated by the book's riddles. Just as the biologist pursues genetics with fruit flies, the metaphysician can study absences by means of shadows. Shadows are metaphysical amphibians with one foot on the terra firma of common sense and the other in the murky waters of nonbeing. Sorensen portrays the causal theory of perception's confrontation with the shadows as a triumph against alien attack - a victory that deepens a theory that resonates profoundly with common sense and science. In sum, Seeing Dark Things is an unorthodox defense of an orthodox theory. "Seeing Dark Things is an adventurous philosophical exercise in the ontology and epistemology of the commonsense world. Its treatment of the many puzzles that surround such putative 'negative' entities as shadows and holes will make it a classic on the literature on privations for many yeas to come. The book is also a wonderful example of how philosophy can be done without falling into the traps of the academic rigmarole. Sorensen is truly unique in his capacity to bring together classic philosophers, contemporary authors, and ticklish anecdotes." - Achille Varzi, Columbia University "This is a wonderful book, full of a profound, unsettling cleverness and weirdly satisfying counter-intuitiveness that the subject requires...a great book." - Richard Marshall, Bookforum "Sorensen is an extraordinarily fertile and imaginative philosopher, drawing widely on philosophy, physics, biology and vision science to mine his chosen quarry. His arguments, anecdotes and examples are always engaging. Add them to his effortless style and you have a rare commodity - a book of serious philosophy that many non-professionals will enjoy." - Ian Phillips, Times Literary Supplement "Sorensen's book is certainly fascinating and richly thought-provoking... he argues carefully and clearly in favour of his key claims, all of which merit very serious consideration, even if they sometimes provoke one to construct and defend alternative views. That, however, is surely the hallmark of the very best kind of philosophy writing. Seeing Dark Things is a model of this kind." - E.J. Lowe, Philosophy

How to start and build a successful career as a DJ-from at-home mixing to making demos to playing to a live crowd Whether it's a digital or vinyl track of "Proud Mary," a DJ sets the mood, amps up the excitement, and gets a crowd of revelers rockin'. Often an outsized personality, blessed with a gorgeous voice and an encyclopedic knowledge of music, a DJ is this era's new pop star. For those interested in how to begin a career as a DJ, DJing For Dummies offers newcomers all the technical know-how needed as well as advice on how to create your own DJing style and how to make DJing work for you. With tips on equipment essentials, such as turntables, slipmats and needles, headphones, and amplifiers, as well as buying records, CDs, and MP3s, this practical guide takes you through the basics of mixing, song structure, building a foolproof set, creating a great demo, and what to do when you finally face a live audience. Includes ten resources for expanding your skills and fan base With invaluable advice on ten DJing mistakes to avoid as well as answers to DJ questions you're too afraid to ask Includes updated info on the latest software and techniques, expanded content on digital DJing, and DJing over the Internet With tips on the ten items to take with you when you get a gig, as well as how to DJ at a wedding, DJing For Dummies will help turn your fantasy into an exciting and fun, money-making career.