Louis Barfe

His Master’s Voice

Perfecting Sound Forever: The Story of Recorded Music

By

Granta Books 416pp £20 order from our bookshop

In his 1950s radio series, the American satirist Stan Freberg portrayed a hi-fi nut called Herman Horne. In his pursuit of perfect audio, Horne counselled moving out of one’s main dwelling in order to exploit its acoustic capabilities fully. The true range of sounds could only be enjoyed ‘as you and your wife sit of an evening, shivering in the garage, listening to your house’. 

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