I recently ordered and received the new books by Tomlinson Holman (the second edition of "Surround Sound: Up and Running") and Floyd Toole ("Sound Reproduction"). I skimmed the parts of the former not related to recording and mixing, and I certainly learned a lot about the history of surround sound and the thinking behind some of the choices that were made (like how 80 Hz was selected as a crossover frequency; how Holman came up with the name for the 0.1 channel, which might be properly described as the 0.005 channel; some of the psychoacoustics involved in multichannel sound; etc). I also skimmed the latter, which looks to be a fantastic resource and might be described as Toole's magnum opus. Although a little previous background or reading like Everest's "Master Handbook of Acoustics" is extremely helpful, Toole does write at a level accessible to those like me with a casual interest in acoustics. He goes far beyond the white papers available on the Harman website, incorporates a lifetime's worth of research and experience, and includes material that seems to be essentially state of the art. There are lots of citations, figures, measurements (including waterfall plots, the Heisenbergian nature of which he discusses), and fascinating practical tidbits. For examples, a psychoacoustic study reveals that musicians tend to be much more sensitive (about 7x!) to reflections than ordinary listeners; Toole speculates that recording/mixing engineers and perhaps acousticians may also become trained to similar sensitivity to reflections such that the lateral reflections that the general public might find to be helpful in creating a sense of spatiousness and envelopment (apologies for using the wrong terms here, since I've only barely cracked the surface of the book) are instead very detrimental to specialized listeners, so he cautions that "our preferences may reflect accumulated biases and therefore may not be the same as those of our customers." Some of his positions (like on equalization) and other research from Harman that has been misrepresented or misunderstood (like the Welti paper on multiple subwoofers) are discussed and clarified. The emphasis is on multichannel, rather than stereo, sound, but much of the information is still applicable.
I found Everest's book to be a valuable primer, but Toole's book clearly takes things to the next level. I look forward to truly perusing it in depth. I think I might read Earl Geddes' book next.
