"Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The story of the compact disc is also the story of the end of physical media. It is the story of how the quest for perfection laid the grounds for the death of a great industry. For in the passage from analogue media, like records and tapes, to digital media, like CDs, something changed in the nature of media and in the relationship we have...

The story of recorded sound--the technological developments, the humans that made them happen and their impact on society, from the phonograph to LPs, EPs and the recent resurgence of vinyl. In Into the Groove, vinyl collector and music buff Jonathan Scott dissects a mind-blowing feat that we all take for granted today--the domestication of sound. Thomas Edison's phonograph, the first device that could both record and reproduce sound, represented...

Many people will recognize the famous crosswalk. Some visitors may have graffitied their name on its hallowed outer walls. Others might even have managed to penetrate the iron gates. But what draws in these thousands of fans here, year after year? What is it that really happens behind the doors of the most celebrated recording studio in the world? It may have begun life as an affluent suburban house, but it soon became a creative hub renowned around...

"In the late 1970s, Don Zientara -- a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War -- founded Inner Ear Studio in the basement of his home in Arlington, VA, using the electronics training he received from the army. Inner Ear remained in Don's basement until its 1990 relocation to a larger space on South Oakland Street. Along the way, Inner Ear became best known for recording iconic DC punk musicians including Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Bikini Kill, Rites...