Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2014 - 63

book
arnold wengrow

review

editor

The Sound Book

The Science of the Sonic Wonders
of the World

By Trevor Cox; New York, W.W. Norton &
Company, 2014. 304 pp. Cloth, $26.95. Paper,
$16.95.
Reviewed by Dave Tosti-Lane
I was most interested to get a chance to read
Trevor Cox's The Sound Book: The Science
of the Sonic Wonders of the World, and I enjoyed it immensely, although for different reasons than I first imagined. I was first attracted
by the subtitle. I imagined this would be an
informative book for me as a sound designer,
revealing approaches to building more effective
soundscapes. I was not completely disappointed
in that expectation. But the focus of the book
is really more as an expanded travelogue than
a scientific exploration. That should be no surprise to those who know the author's website,
Sound Tourism: A Travel Guide to Sonic Wonders (www.sonicwonders.org). As he notes on
the site, the book grew out of the website, and in
the United Kingdom the book is titled (perhaps
more appropriately) Sonic Wonderland: A Scientific Odyssey of Sound. I don't mean this as a
criticism-just a clarification. There is definitely
scientific and technical information here related
to the wonders that are explored. Cox is professor of acoustic engineering at the University of
Salford in Manchester, United Kingdom. He has
a degree in physics and a PhD in acoustics. He
has the credentials to present solid science, and
there is some here. But the focus of the book is
a folksy description of the sonic wonders presented, along with a bit of historical and cultural
background.
I hasten to add I'm not calling that a bad
thing. I found the book fascinating. It's an easy
read and compelling. I want to visit most of
these sites! Cox knows how to tell a story, and

summer

2014

he brings the examples to life. However, he includes just enough analysis of what is actually
happening to whet my appetite for more. While
there are videos and some information about
most of the sites explored on the his website,
I miss the opportunity to look in more depth at
the acoustical principles of what's happening.
Unfortunately, it also appears that the comments on the site are mostly not recent. I don't
see responses from the author that are less than
a year old. Perhaps there will be a companion
site to the book that is not available yet or not
listed in my review copy (the British version appears to only have been published in January
2014). Just to check on this, I also purchased
the Kindle edition of the book. No additional
web resources are mentioned, and, oddly, the
author's website is not even mentioned. It continues to amaze me that as books are ported
over to electronic versions, publishers seem uninterested in exploring the opportunity to take
full advantage of the medium. It's a major loss
that the electronic version of this book fails to at
least link to the website so that the reader can
listen to examples of the spaces being described.
On the plus side, the ability to zoom in on the illustrations and the ability to search the text does
give the electronic edition added value.

Setting the tone
The excellent prologue sets the tone. It communicates on the one hand the lengths to which
the sonic explorer must go, while simultaneously revealing the rewards to be gained. Cox
weaves his current research and professional
work with acoustics into his fascination with the
ideas introduced by Murray Schafer, whom he
(appropriately) calls the grandfather of acoustic ecology. He introduces the notion of the
soundscape and the soundwalk and describes
the concept of aural conservation. While decrying the failure to consider acoustics in current
design of spaces, he also reminds us that some
of the things we think are noise today may betheatre design

& technology

http://www.sonicwonders.org

Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2014