Designing Sound (review)

Designing Sound is a comprehensive encyclopaedia for sound designers that includes a wealth of examples and exercises, along with online resources. This review examines its merits as a resource for sound designers of all levels, and for others who wish to synthesise sound from first principles. It discusses the book as a self-contained study resource, examining its text, examples, exercises, and online materials.

This book sets out to introduce the reader to the concepts and techniques of sound design. Structured in four parts, it takes the reader through the theory, tools, and techniques of sound design culminating in the final section of the book where a series of practical examples, covering a wide variety of sounds, are presented. The theory section introduces the reader to acoustics, psychoacoustics, and some of the basic physics of physical and electrical sound-producing sources. The sound designer’s tools are then presented in the second section of the book providing a comprehensive and concise summary of the Pure Data (Pd) programming language. Sound synthesis techniques are covered, building on the sound programming introduced in the tools section, presenting a wide variety of sound synthesis methods, including additive, subtractive, FM, and granular synthesis. The final section of the book contains a series of worked examples of sound design that cover most of the sounds that a designer might expect to synthesise – animal noises, running water, gun shots, explosions, and everything in-between. These worked examples put into practice the theory, tools, and technique discussed in the earlier sections.

On the back cover of the book an endorsement from Kees van den Doel, of the Scientific Computing Laboratory, at the University of British Columbia, states: ‘A monumental work. This surely has the potential of becoming the sound designer’s bible!’ It would be easy to dismiss this as zealous overstatement, but after reading the book this seems an accurate appraisal, as the book is incredibly comprehensive; Farnell has crammed a lifetime of sound design into 650 pages. The book deals more with the technical aspects of synthesising sounds, which is understandable given Farnell’s background in software engineering, but he also takes the opportunity to mention the creative side of sound design, and elements of critical listening and style.

Designing Sound starts with underlying theories on the physics of sound production in a variety of forms, room acoustics, and the psychoa-coustical perception of sound. This first section is technical, but Farnell keeps the majority of examples relevant to sound design, instead of more familiar (and often rehashed) acoustics examples. One of the strengths of this section is that it lays the groundwork for discussing these technical topics when it comes to analysing and resynthesising sounds as part of the book’s final ‘Practical’ section, allowing topics that might not have been fully internalised on the initial read to be placed in the context of a practical example.

The second section, on ‘Tools’, takes the reader through the Pure Data programming language, an open source language available to download free of charge. Pd is used throughout the book to synthesise sound, and this section takes the reader through the Pd environment. It also prepares readers for all the programming concepts they will need to complete the rest of the book, which includes working with information in both the control and signal domains, along with shaping sound, working with audio files, and making abstractions. At the beginning of the ‘Tools’ section Farnell stresses the need for patience and persistence for those novice programmers working with Pd for the first time.

The choice of Pd is the one area of the book that could be a stumbling block for some readers, although the fact that it is open source should persuade a potential reader to try it before making a decision. Farnell has laid out very valid reasons for choosing Pd as opposed to other synthesis languages, in that its graphical nature makes it easier to see the programs and read the data flow. Its shallower learning curve, as well as a lack of complicated syntax, makes...