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2nd edition. By Barry Truax. Westport, CT: Ablex, 2001. 284 pp. and 1 computer optical disk. ISBN 1567505376 (pbk.).
Acoustic Communication is the second edition of Barry Truax' work, first published in 1984. Truax is a professor of both Communication Studies and Music at Simon Fraser University and also well-known as a composer of electroacoustic music and as the designer of the PODX real-time granular synthesis system. In the 1970s, Truax was a researcher with the World Soundscape Project, which is internationally recognized for its role in the development of the field of acoustic ecology. Acoustic Communication, 2nd edition, includes for the first time a CD-ROM, The Handbook for Acoustic Ecology version 1.1, edited by Truax.
I turn to the CD-ROM to begin, because of its great potential as a teaching tool, not only for Acoustic Ecology, but also for sound courses more generally. It is arranged as a set of Web pages with linked sound examples, for both IBM and Macintosh platforms. These pages can be browsed with Netscape 3.04 or higher, making the work accessible to people with slower computers. The work includes a thematic search engine, keywords, and an alphabetical index. The thematic search engine includes levels of acoustic interaction, analytical dimensions of sound, and a list of subdisciplines such as Audiology and Hearing Loss, Electroacoustic and Tape Studio Terms, Linguistics and Speech Acoustics, and others. Keywords range from general terms such as "communication" and "electroacoustic" to more specific words such as "decibel." The notes on each page vary in length: for instance, "electroacoustic" has a long and detailed page with many links and sound examples, while "metacommunication" has a very brief definition. Nevertheless, the Web pages are ideally suited for classroom teaching and individual student work, providing clear and concise descriptions, opportunities for further study, and relevant sound examples. The sources of the sound examples are either soundscape recordings or electronic syntheses. Each is under a minute long and often includes sound comparisons. For instance, on the electroacoustic page, the first example is one of milking a cow by hand, followed by its electrical equivalent. This short excerpt demonstrates the differences between these two sound environments, one acoustic and the other electroacoustic. But it has further implications as well: in the...