Book

The Sound Book http://icons.iconarchive.com/icons/pan-tera/flags/32/USA-Flag-icon.png

Sonic Wonderland http://icons.iconarchive.com/icons/pan-tera/flags/32/Great-Britain-Flag-icon.png

These are the titles of the book I have written which grew from this website. Like sonicwonders.org it is a tour of the world’s most amazing acoustic phenomena, but that is just the starting point for me to explore how sound and listening works. The UK and US editions have different titles but essentially the same contents.

Trevor Cox is on a hunt for the sonic wonders of the world. A renowned expert who engineers classrooms and concert halls, Cox has made a career of eradicating bizarre and unwanted sounds. But after an epiphany in the London sewers, Cox now revels in exotic noises—creaking glaciers, whispering galleries, stalactite organs, musical roads, humming dunes, seals that sound like alien angels, and a Mayan pyramid that chirps like a bird. With forays into archaeology, neuroscience, biology, and design, Cox explains how sound is made and altered by the environment, how our body reacts to peculiar noises, and how these mysterious wonders illuminate sound’s surprising dynamics in everyday settings—from your bedroom to the opera house. The Sound Book encourages us to become better listeners in a world dominated by the visual and to open our ears to the glorious cacophony all around us.

Reviews

“There’s something of the Victorian gentleman explorer in Cox – a man of ripping yarns, circumnavigating the globe to collect the sonic equivalent of endangered flora and fauna. But in place of bombast, we find a disarmingly modest storyteller who shares his discoveries generously: a David Attenborough of the acoustic realm, whose scientific knowledge is unimpeachable yet worn lightly, whose language is vivid yet without indulgence.”

David Hendy, The Observer

“[Cox] lets his ears guide him on an adventure to track down quirky, extreme and historically venerated phenomena of our sonic universe. In the process, he makes a lucid and passionate case for a more mindful way of listening to and engaging with musical, natural and man-made sounds…. Anyone who has ever clapped, hollered or yodeled at an echo will delight in [Cox’s] zestful curiosity…. the most lasting impact of Mr. Cox’s book is a gentle reminder to pay attention to — and value — everyday sounds…. Try to imagine that bucket list of travel destinations with your eyes closed. Imagine the muezzin’s call to prayer in Cairo, the sputter of Vespas on an Italian piazza or the roar of Niagara Falls. What do you want to hear this year?”

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, New York Times

“Written with wit and clariy, The Sound Book delights in both cacophony and silence, and everything in between”

GT, Discover Magazine

“We are so used to thinking about the world in visual terms that it is thrilling to have the mind — I was about to write ‘the eyes’ — opened to another sensory world … [Cox] syringes his reader’s ears, and the effect is delightful”

James McConnachie, The Sunday Times

“Cox writes wonderfully, alternating between lyricism, expert testimony and self-deprecating humour to explore the most everyday problems an acoustician faces (how to rescue a badly built concert hall for its audience, say) as well as exotic phenomena such as singing sands and tunnels with such extreme amplification they turn the rumble of a skateboard into something that resembles an approaching freight train .”

John Burnside, New Statesman

“compellingly original book.”

Lonely Planet Traveller

“[Cox] respects his audience and it’s a joy as a reader to follow his captivating forays into this ‘sonic wonderland’ that surrounds us all. … This really is a perfect book for anybody with an interest in sound”

BBC Focus magazine

“Cox, a professor of acoustic engineering at the University of Salford, pursues his quarry with geekish glee, revelling in manmade spaces that reverberate for ages, transmit whispers across considerable distances, channel sound in unexpected directions or muffle it altogether, as well as natural wonders such as humming sand dunes and the echolocating oilbirds of Venezuela. The book is loosely organised, but the author’s enthusiasm is infectious.”

Caspar Henderson, The Guardian

“…the Italian fabulist Italo Calvino investigated the network of minuscule sounds with which silence is paradoxically filled (breathing, ambient bleeps, noisy thoughts in our head). Like Calvino, Cox is interested in pretty well anything of sonic concern and puzzlement. Sonic Wonderland, a delightfully instructive book, will make you want to listen to the world anew and with beatifically attuned ears.”

Ian Thomson, The Telegraph

“Cox likes to stress his work’s scientific foundations but some of the book’s most compelling writing deals with what he calls our “subjective perception”. We often respond most strongly not to beautiful noises but ones that we could enjoy every day if we used our ears properly.”

Orlando Bird, The Financial Times

“There is lots to pique our interest in this lively book by an adept science communicator.”

Shaoni Bhattacharya, New Scientist

“He visits the “singing sands” of the Kelso Dunes … where he could feel the ground “vibrating under my bottom” and the dunes break into song. It’s this infectious hands-on (or perhaps bottoms-on) approach to new experiences and new sounds that make Professor Cox’s odyssey such an entertaining one.”

John Clarke, Independent

“Cox’s strengths are founded in joyful ardour – a love of unusual sound events – and the scientific knowledge and communicative skills to analyse each of these events as he encounters them on his travels.”

David Toop, The Times Higher

“A riveting ear-opener, Trevor Cox describes in lyrical detail a range of sonic events and new ways of listening that can only brighten our experience of the acoustic world around us. A must-read for sound-lovers of all stripes.”

Bernie Krause, author of The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World’s Wild Places

A technological travelogue conducted by an expert tour guide, bursting with aural arcana that adds just the right amount of tech-savvy detail, The Sound Book brings into relief a world often obscured in our image-heavy existence. Even as we follow Cox to the ends of the Earth, what makes his book a real rush is that it’s ultimately an ear-buzzing journey to the center of our minds.

Greg Milner author of Perfecting Sound Forever

This small encyclopedia of strange sounds reveals how much art there is in the act of listening. Reading it made my ears more mindful.

Adam Gopnik

An intriguing tour d’horizon of the world of sound.

Kirkus

That book is a must-read for musicians/producers/sound engineers and nerds of all kinds!

@laurenlaverne

Cox reminds us not only of the sonic marvels we often miss, but also how those sounds affect us.

Publishers Weekly

[An] enchanting guidebook. . . Interspersed with witty anecdotes and surprising observations on the nature of hearing, Cox’s work will give readers a new appreciation for both the old and the ordinary noises that form the soundtrack of our daily lives.

Carl Hays, Booklist

“As tourists, cameras in hand, we’re usually on the lookout for the most engaging sight. Cox has made me a convert to better use my sense of hearing when out and about. Three of his sonic wonders, in fact, are located just a short car ride from me: Boston Symphony Hall, a mecca for hearing classical music; Echo Bridge in Newton, Mass., where dogs are driven crazy by their own barks, as seen on YouTube; and the Mapparium, a hollow globe of the world drawn on stained glass, which serves as an acoustical funhouse for Bostonians. I’ll now be keeping my ears wide open for the soundscape, both at home and away.”

Marcia Bartusiak, The Washington Post

Publication details

UK, Sonic Wonderland: A Scientific Odyssey of Sound, Vintage Publishing

USA, The Sound Book: The Science of the Sonic Wonders of the World, W W Norton

2 thoughts on “Book”

  1. Das Buch der Klänge
    Eine Reise zu den akustischen Wundern der Welt

    …ein faszinierendes Buch eines Technikers!
    Kann jedes der Kapitel nur weiter empfehlen.
    Das Buch ist exzeptionell gut vom Inhalt und völlig frei frei von “Esoterik”.
    Leider ist die deutsche Übersetzung nicht ganz so gut, aber ich werde mir das Buch ohnehin nochmals als Original kaufen!

  2. Beautiful quietness we never knew
    And now we do. Thanks to you for the peace instilled.
    Starts close or far where does it go?
    Beautiful quietness now we do. Thank you.

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