Hongo dives deeper and deeper into his audio heaven, reveling in the marvels of the equipment or celebrating the music, or considering the poetic influences of his mentors.
Hongo’s memoir mixes audiophile obsession and cultural history to provide a warm resonance of human relationships to recorded music and voices; will find an eager audience.
... it turns out you don’t have to be a nerdy audiophile to completely love this volume. The Perfect Sound contains multitudes ... The book testifies to Hongo’s keen observational skills, exquisite hearing and way with words ... It is impossible to do justice to the breadth and depth of the topics Hongo explores ... illustrated with wonderful photographs throughout. My one quibble is that these photos need captions. Overall, however, it was a joy to spend time with Hongo’s book. His roving intellect plants surprises on every page.
... memorable ... As [Hongo] describes in lyrical, fervent passages, his penchant for spinning vinyl on cheap turntables would eventually become a love for elaborate equipment, amplifiers, speakers, and vacuum tubes. While, admittedly, much of the in-depth discussions of audio technologies—among them, Tung-Sol 6550 tubes, his Air Tight ATM-2 amp, and the Dutch pentode—can be a lot to digest, Hongo’s soulful work shines brightest when he looks to sound to make sense of his own struggles ... While it can be dense, this paean to the power of music mostly sings.
Music throbs in the background throughout this spirited memoir ... Hongo imbues the book with the 'churning waves of new, confusing terminology' that he learned as he searched for equipment—technical terms that may be daunting to general readers. Along the way, the author offers a history of the invention of the vacuum tube, amplifiers, and the various permutations of the phonograph ... A memoir of self-discovery via homage to the richness of sound.
... one of the most colorful accounts of ’60s-era adolescent sexual fumbling I’ve ever read. I won’t spoil the ending, but his is an amazing story—deliciously wonky, exquisitely paced, and with a surprise artfully revealed ... Hongo brings these powers of vivid description to a dozen other styles, genres and repertoires.
