The Sound of Music - Brian Eno, Sam Bennett and Trevor Cox

Brian Cox and Robin Ince explore the history of music recording, joined by acoustics professor Trevor Cox, music professor Sam Bennett and musician and producer Brian Eno. Together they guide us through the evolution of sound recording, a space in which technology hasn’t stood still since its advent in the mid-1800s. We hear the very first recognisable recording of a voice made with a brush making marks in soot and put a spotlight on the Fairlight CMI, a revolutionary digital synthesizer of the '70s, used in Brian’s records (Cox & Eno’s!) Plus, we run an audio experiment with our live audience who turn themselves into our in-house digital orchestra, with the help of their mobile phones. Now that lots of people have several devices that can play sound, new technology is harnessing this to create a more immersive experience – which (kind of) worked in our experiment! Producer: Melanie Brown Exec Producer: Alexandra Feachem Assistant Producer: Olivia Jani

You can listen to The Sound of Music - Brian Eno, Sam Bennett and Trevor Cox online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

The Sound of Music - Brian Eno, Sam Bennett and Trevor Cox is an episode from The Infinite Monkey Cage by BBC.

This episode is 42:43 long.

This episode was published on Mar 19, 2025.

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