Hi,

I am looking for a good book that will (at least)cover the following subjects:
1) Sound theory (basic stuff)
2) Microphone types, uses and positioning
3) Basic studio equipment for (home) recording
4) (?!) Acoustics
5*) Any other issue you think should be covered.

Oh- I'd prefer a book that could be bought through Amazon.
Ideas?

Thank you.

Modern Recording Techniques.

very basic, very general...a good start.

get the new issue of tapeop, there's a huge article listing tons of audio books with reviews of each of them.

the ones i have that i find useful are:

- yamaha sound reinforcement handbook
- practical tips for the recording engineer (sherman keene)
- electronics projects for musicians (craig anderton)

and... most importantly - the internet

no wait, i mean, most most importantly, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice....

'Sound recording practice' by John Borwick is an excellent book that covers all your listed topics. Especially the 2nd and 3rd editions if you can find them used. The 4th (or 5th?) edition is available from amazon and the rest.

i wanted to add a few more things, i'm not sure my other post was thorough enough for what you were asking....

1. yamaha book: designed more as a live sound book, but explains things like audio systems, cable construction, bussing and so on. it's not an all-in-one resource, but a very good resource. i've had it since i was in high school (more than 10 yrs now) and i still page through it and learn something new. 95% of it was greek to me when i first read it, but you can keep coming back.

2. practical tips: i think you can only get this from www.shermankeene.com - he's an old guy who used to work with zappa. there's a lot of information about recording from a 70s era, but there are actual photos of an ATR transport, and a 3M 24 track and so on. it talks about setting up a session, what to do before the band gets there and so on. larry from tapeop likes this book a lot.

3. electronics projects: this will be good as you start to need to figure out how the hell to fix your broken tape machine/console or whatever. a basic, laymans intro into reading schematics and such. then you can build your own guitar pedals.

i forgot to mention these:

4. art of electronics: a bible for electronics - still kinda over my head though, but will always be around

5. professional microphone techniques:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... s&n=507846

i found this very useful because it comes with a cd and you get to hear different mics placed on many different sources, along with maps of mic placement with respect to the source. similarly, i learned a lot from getting the royer cd:

http://www.royerlabs.com/democd.html

hearing isolated sources with different placements really helped a lot.

-and-

6. mixing engineers handbook:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... books&st=*

this might be good to check out from the library. it's an interesting read, but is more a snapshot of how other people work - and gives you some tools to work from.

also, go to the library - they seem to always have some book about "stereo microphone technique" or something like that that you can learn from. there's also a cool book called "broadcast radio techniques" that i've borrowed that's from the 60s... i've never found one be all end all book. but i've learned bits and pieces from lots of different places.

hope that helps,
nk

I would like to thank you all - I knew I posted this in the right place
Thanks!