The intention of this book is to make accessible to many people, involved in the daily use of recording studios, information which is locked away in many textbooks. The majority of people working in modern music recording studios have not had the necessary formal education in mathematics, acoustics and electronics to make the textbooks appear as anything other than cold print. Largely, also, the days are gone when the majority of studio staff received formal training in the studios themselves, spending years learning under the watchful eyes of previous generations of recording engineers.
This book is not intended to replace the textbooks, but to accompany them, in order to put many of the principles which they define into the context of modern recording studios, in a way which may help to give more meaning to the bare facts. The practical examples given cannot cover the almost infinite range of possible combinations of techniques, but if the examples can be well understood, then they should help the reader to interpolate the data sufficiently to have a reasonable ability to determine for themselves the likely outcome of other approaches. Inevitably, in a book of this size, there will be a certain amount of overlap and repetition. However, where this occurs, it has been left in for reasons of clarity, emphasis of importance, or for the ability of a chapter to stand alone, without the need for unnecessary cross-referencing. Whilst the language used is as plain as possible, there is an extensive glossary at the end of the book to help to explain any unfamiliar terms, and whilst only a minimum of simple mathematics is involved, nevertheless the contents of the book are intended to be as rigorously factual as possible.