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The New Age of Sound
the straight-laced acoustician with an eye for the smallest of details. Stokowski dreamed of changing music with technol- ogy and forever reshaping the landscape of musical experi- ence by sculpting raw signal into something beyond nature (Milner, 2010). Fletcher wanted to capture the pure essence of sounds, to collapse the distance between friends on the telephone, and to make foreign scenes and voices sound real and honest. Between them, though, was a common appre- ciation for the inexorable link between the physical qualities of sound and its perceptual experience. It was what led them to the experiments and technology that innovated sound re- cording for the modern world.
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ers and microphones. Electrical Engineering 53(1), 17-24. BioSketch
Gabrielle (Elle) O’Brien is a researcher and doctoral student at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA. She holds a BA in mathematics from Agnes Scott College, Decatur, GA, and an MS in
neuroscience from the University of Washington. Her re- search investigates speech perception, cochlear implants, and mathematical models of the auditory system. She is keenly interested in the history of science.
24 | Acoustics Today | Summer 2018