Digital audio primer - book recommendations?

Question

Greetings Audition experts : )I know nobody reads anything these days... ; )  but I had a colleague ask me today if I could suggest a good book to develop his understanding of digital audio - with a view to giving him a good foundation for his work in Audition.The person concerned works with supplied video and audio content that can range from 'OK quality' to 'very poor quality' and is increasingly tasked with 'restoring' those sources as much as possible. So typical jobs might be very heavy noise reduction, for example. While much of this work can be done with the 'auto-magical' tools such as the new DeNoiser, my friend would like to have a firmer understanding of the principles of digital audio so he can approach these tasks with understanding.Can anyone suggest anything suitable?Thanks

SteveG_AudioMasters_ · Accepted Answer

@ryclarke - I should have really referenced that Adobe Audition Help | Audition User Guide DIGITAL AUDIO FUNDAMENTALS in my question.

My friend understands those very basics - at that sort of depth. But they're very shallow explanations. He knows that sample rate should be more than 2x max frequency, and that bit depth relates to dynamic range... etc. But he doesn't know why.

He's really looking for a deeper understanding on these topics, but there seems to be a huge gap between the explanations above and the content of a book like 'An Introduction to Digital Audio' that Steve references above.

Is there anything in the middle ground?

Mike_Abbott wrote
He's really looking for a deeper understanding on these topics, but there seems to be a huge gap between the explanations above and the content of a book like 'An Introduction to Digital Audio' that Steve references above.
Is there anything in the middle ground?

Not that I'd recommend from experience... 'An Introduction to Digital Audio' does answer most of these sorts of questions, but the information is somewhat obliquely presented, and it's sandwiched in between a load of other stuff which really isn't going to aid his practical understanding at all.

You could do a lot worse than look at Focal Press books though. One that might help is The Audio Expert: Everything You Need to Know About Audio, 2nd Edition (Paperback) - Routledge although I've not read it.

ryclark · Answer

Adobe Audition Help | Audition User Guide DIGITAL AUDIO FUNDAMENTALS as the very basic. And look at some of the Audition tutorials Audition tutorials | Learn how to use Adobe Audition CC However restoring bad audio is a very specialist subject and you really need to know what all the basic tools do before you can really start I'm afraid.

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