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Print Version Layout UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Noise resonance Technological sound reproduction and the logic of filtering Kromhout, M.J. Publication date 2017 Document Version Final published version License Other Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Kromhout, M. J. (2017). Noise resonance: Technological sound reproduction and the logic of filtering. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:06 Oct 2021 MELLE JAN KROMHOUT NOISE RESONANCE TECHNOLOGICAL SOUND REPRODUCTION AND THE LOGIC OF FILTERING MELLE JAN KROMHOUT NOISE RESONANCE TECHNOLOGICAL SOUND REPRODUCTION AND THE LOGIC OF FILTERING Printed by Ipskamp Printing Cover design by Rufus Ketting ISBN: 978-94-028-0524-6 © 2017, Melle Jan Kromhout. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author. www.mellekromhout.nl Noise Resonance Technological Sound Reproduction and the Logic of Filtering ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. dr. ir. K.I.J. Maex ten overstaan van een door het College voor Promoties ingestelde commissie, in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Agnietenkapel op donderdag 16 maart 2017, te 12:00 uur door Melle Jan Kromhout geboren te Amsterdam Promotiecommissie: Promotor: Prof. dr. S.A.F. van Maas, Universiteit Utrecht Overige leden: Dr. C.J. Birdsall, Universiteit van Amsterdam Prof. dr. R. Boast, Universiteit van Amsterdam Prof. dr. J.J.E. Kursell, Universiteit van Amsterdam Prof. dr. J. de Mul, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam Prof. dr. A. Rehding, Harvard University, USA Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen Table of contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................ IX Introduction: The role of noise in the music of the media age 0.1 A dominant discourse on noise in/as music .................................. 3 0.2 Sonic, physical and communicational noise .................................. 7 0.3 The noise of sound reproduction ................................................. 11 0.4 Resonating noise between music and media ............................. 14 Chapter 1: “How much noise is necessary?” A brief history of sound recording and noise reduction 1.1 Analogue 1: disc recording ........................................................... 21 1.2 Analogue 2: magnetic tape recording ......................................... 33 1.3 Digital recording ............................................................................ 46 1.4 Dither: fighting noise with noise .................................................. 62 Chapter 2: Confronting the fuzziness of the real Dolby and dither: concealing and revealing noise 2.1 Noise reduction reconsidered ...................................................... 71 2.2 Things you want and things you don’t want ................................ 79 2.3 From ideal models to physical filters ........................................... 86 2.4 Digital error and analogue noise .................................................. 92 2.5 Revealing and concealing noise ................................................. 103 Chapter 3: Infinite time or perfect transience Ideal filters and the temporality of sound 3.1 Toward the limits of representation ........................................... 117 3.2 Fourier analysis: history and basic principles ............................ 130 3.3 The domain of ideal filters .......................................................... 140 3.4 Time and transience: the domain of physical filters ................. 149 Chapter 4: “In the Fourier domain are we immortal” On the pastness and presence of reproduced sound 4.1 The importance of sonic transience ........................................... 159 4.2 Pastness and finitude in reproduced sound .............................. 168 4.3 The presence of reproduced sound .......................................... 181 4.4 On passed and passing time ...................................................... 187 Chapter 5: The sound of an ‘other music’ Sonic transience and the darker presence of the media age 5.1 A logic of filtering ........................................................................ 195 5.2 Producing a new signal ............................................................... 205 5.3 The new sound of music ............................................................. 214 5.4 An ‘other music’ and the presence of the Real ......................... 218 Epilogue: Listening for the event On the possibility of an ‘other music’ 6.1 Locating the ‘other music’ .......................................................... 231 6.2 Music hiding in hardware ............................................................ 233 6.3 I hear a new world ........................................................................ 236 6.4 Hearing an ‘other music’ ............................................................. 238 Conclusion: Noise resonances Sound in the age of technical media ................................................. 245 References Bibliography .......................................................................................... 255 Discography .......................................................................................... 266 Videography .......................................................................................... 267 Summary ................................................................................................ 269 Samenvatting ...................................................................................... 273 NOISE RESONANCE | ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS IX Acknowledgements As people repeatedly warned me in the years before beginning my PhD at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis: writing a dissertation is a lonely job. This is definitely the case, but it does not mean one works alone. Many people have been indispensible for this project. First and foremost, I have to thank my supervisor Sander van Maas. From well before the earliest roots of what became this book, going back all the way to his classes on music aesthetics at the Amsterdam Conservatory more than ten years ago and subsequently to his supervision of my bachelor thesis in 2006, Sander encouraged and challenged my intellectual development like no one else. Over the course of multiple attempts to secure a PhD-position, it was his often relentless, but always fair and encouraging critical commentary that kept me from giving up altogether. Hence, it is no overstatement saying that without his confidence during these earliest stages of the project and his ability to keep me from settling for anything less than the best, this book would not have turned out the way it did. During the past four and a half years, I have often cursed his incredible eye for detail and conceptual rigour, but also thoroughly enjoyed our stimulating intellectual exchange. Having completed this book, I sincerely hope we will continue to have our long conversations and will keep exchanging ideas and music for many years to come. Next, I want to thank my PhD-colleagues at ASCA for sharing this journey with me and not seldom providing some much needed distraction and comic relief in the form of drinks, parties or a simple coffee. These are of course the people I have shared my office with over the years: Judith Naeff, Mirjam Meißner, Noam Knoller, Thijs Witty, Matt Cornell and Andres Ibarra, but also the rest of the ASCA PhD-family, including Simon Ferdinand, Blandine Joret, Lucy van der Wiel, Melanie Schiller, Annelies Kleinherenbrink, Lara Mazurski, Geli Mademli, Pedram Dibazar, Irene Villaescusa, Jeffrey Pijpers, Eva Sancho, Peyman Amiri, Margaret Tali, Enis Dinc, Selçuk Balamir, Nur Ozgenalp, Asli Ozgen-Tuncer, David Gauthier, Christian Olesen and many others. Of course, at the office, Eloe Kingma and X NOISE RESONANCE | ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Jantine van Gogh—the heart and soul of ASCA—continue to make PhD-life easier and much more enjoyable for all of us. Outside of Amsterdam, special thanks goes out to Peter McMurray, who was crazy enough to join my idea for an international online reading group, which resulted in a great online resource with input by a magnificent group of international scholars of which I am still very proud. Also, the organisers and participants of the Sound Studies Summer and Winter Schools in 2014 and the Princeton/Weimar Summer School in 2016 offered very inspiring platforms to learn, discuss, try out ideas and meet many
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