Includes bibliographical references and index.

Capturing sound in the acoustic era : recording professionals and clever mechanics -- The studio electrifies : radio, recording, and the birth of the small studio business -- A passion for sound : amateur recordists, the Audio Engineering Society, and the evolution of a profession -- When fidelity was new : the studio as intstrument -- Control men in technological transition : engineering the performance in the age of high fidelity -- The search for the sound : rhythm and blues, rock 'n' roll, and the rise of the independents -- Channeling sound : technology, control, and fixing it in the mix.

In Chasing Sound, Susan Schmidt Horning traces the cultural and technological evolution of recording studios in the United States from the first practical devices to the modern multi-track studios of the analog era. Charting the technical development of studio equipment, the professionalization of recording engineers, and the growing collaboration between artists and technicians, she shows how the earliest efforts to capture the sound of live performances eventually resulted in a trend toward studio creations that extended beyond live shows, ultimately reversing the historic relationship between live and recorded sound. A former performer herself, Schmidt Horning draws from a wealth of original oral interviews with major labels and independent recording engineers, producers, arrangers, and musicians, as well as memoirs, technical journals, popular accounts, and sound recordings. Recording engineers and producers, she finds, influenced technological and musical change as they sought to improve the sound of records. By investigating the complex relationship between sound engineering and popular music, she reveals the increasing reliance on technological intervention in the creation as well as in the reception of music. The recording studio, she argues, is at the center of musical culture in the twentieth century [Publisher description]