I recently scoured my shelves and came up with the following list of must-read books for stereophiles, all of which are in print and should be available from specialist bookshops or from the suppliers mentioned in the text. Books marked with an asterisk (*), though too technical for the general reader, will be found rewarding by those who have a good grasp of mathematics and who want to delve deep. Reading the books in the first "general" section of the list will enable readers to understand just about everything that appears in Stereophile, but all the books listed contain between their covers untold treasures.

General Audio & Hi-Fi

Audio Anthology: When Audio Was Young, Vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5, by C.G. McProud. 1990-1992, Audio Amateur Publications. Distributed by Old Colony Sound Lab Book Service, P.O. Box 243, Peterborough, NH 03458-0243.

The Audio Dictionary, 2nd ed., by Glenn D. White. 1991, University of Washington Press.

The Audio Glossary, by J. Gordon Holt. 1990, Audio Amateur Publications. Available from Old Colony Book Service.

Bluff Your Way in Hi-Fi, by Sue Hudson & John Crabbe. 1987, Ravette Ltd., England. Available from Old Colony Book Service.

Good Sound, by Laura Dearborn. 1987, Quill, William Morrow.

Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong, by Lawrence Lessing (life of the inventor of FM radio). 1969, Bantam Books.

The New Sound of Stereo, by Ivan Berger & Hans Fantel. 1986, Plume (New American Library).

Reproduction of Sound in High-Fidelity & Stereo Phonographs, by Edgar Villchur. 1965, Dover Publications Inc.

The Wood Effect, by Clark Johnsen. 1988, available from The Modern Audio Association, 23 Stillings Street, Boston, MA 02210. Tel: (617) 357-8040.

Audio Theory & Measurement

The Audio Cyclopedia, Glen Ballou, ed. 1987, Howard W. Sams & Company.

Audio Engineering Handbook, K. Blair Benson, ed. 1989, McGraw-Hill Book Company.

Audio Test & Measurement, Richard Cabot, ed. (collected papers from the 11th AES Conference, Portland, OR, May 1992). 1992, The Audio Engineering Society, 60 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10165-0075. Tel: (212) 661-2355.

Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics, by Arthur Benade. 1990, Dover Publications Inc.

Mastering Technical Mathematics, by Norman H. Crowhurst. 1992, TAB Books.

Music, Physics and Engineering, 2nd ed., by Harry F. Olsen. 1967, Dover Publications Inc.

The New Stereo Soundbook, by Ron Streicher & F. Alton Everest. 1992, TAB Books.

On the Sensations of Tone,* by Hermann Helmholtz. 1954, Dover Publications Inc.

The Science of Musical Sound, by John R. Pierce. 1983, Scientific American Library (W.H. Freeman).

The Theory of Sound,* Vols.1 & 2, by J.W.S. (Lord) Rayleigh. 1945, Dover Publications Inc.

Time Delay Spectrometry, by Richard Heyser (collected papers). 1988, The Audio Engineering Society.