https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9288816

The book presents an account of how aspects of sound we might not value or even notice have gone missing in the shift from analog recordings and receivers to mp3s, cell phones, streaming services, and, yes, even podcasts. On its surface, this seems in keeping with the emergence of nostalgic trends in musical listening: the hipster resurrection, say, of LPs as sonically rich, visually cool artifacts of their (grand)parents’ youth. The book offers a philosophical reckoning with what a fundamental media transition has meant for our ears and minds. The author wants the reader to understand what has been left behind in the shift from analog noise to digital signal, not only in the technical sense of discarding discs and tapes for the compressed bits that have been shorn of arguably extraneous sounds, but also in a humane sense, where the absences register as lost opportunities in shared experiences. While each chapter takes up a specific angle on this shift, all of them ruminate in one way or another on the ways that the acts of recording music and listening to recordings have become less social and more isolating. Perhaps the most obvious question this book provokes is: why did this need to be published at all? The original podcast, after all, would appear to be the perfect form for the subject of audio in transition. What more could a (silent) book achieve? As it turns out, Ways of Hearing anticipates this question and provides an answer, courtesy of Emily Thompson, in an “Interlude” in between the first and second of Krukowski’s chapters. Here, Thompson cleverly reflects on the status of the text itself. Reading the podcast, Thompson writes, “resolve[s] the paradox produced by” it because when we read it, with our ears unplugged from the earbuds through which the digitally- rendered version entered our own heads, we allow ourselves to be open to whatever natural or mechanical sound or voice disturbs or interrupts or situates us in real time. Experiencing this podcast ...