Hello, Peasants,

The Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound is finally in print. I
figure that all of you hot shots would like to hear the
news.

I got my two-volume, 1200+ page, "editors" free copy
yesterday. I am on the title page as the "technical editor,"
which is kind of a surprise. Yes, I did review all the
technical articles and updated quite a large number. I also
wrote a few new ones, and of course I did all of the
biographical sketches of audio big wigs, plus some company
histories. However, I think the people at Routledge did a
heck of a lot more than I did. Perhaps 10% of the total
material in this new edition was written or modified by me.
I suppose that adds up to maybe 120 text pages. Not bad, but
still no huge amount. Still, it is many times as much as
most of you people have put into a book. Add in my previous
four books (written solely by me, of course), and you have
quite a contrast between the typical RAO goofball and
Ferstler.

Incidentally, my name is on many of the articles, but there
are also many shorter articles there that have no byline
name at all that I also wrote. It must really kill some of
you clowns to think that Routledge, a major member of the
British/American Taylor-Francis publishing group, has a book
out there that has Ferstler as a major contributor.

Although many audio notables are in the books, it is still
primarily a music-oriented publication, with scads of bios
of performers and much dealing with the history of recorded
music. Surely, many of you RAO zeros would like to have a
book like this to raise your music-knowledg number a bit
above that zero. You might learn something worthwhile about
audio, too.

The two-volume set lists for $225.00, which means that it
will definitely be an academic or technical library item,
and will not be something the average tweako-geeko would
purchase to round out his literary collection. Does cost
less than a set of super-duper wires, however.

Howard (my fifth book is now in print) Ferstler