The Sound of History

Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music looks like an interesting title, and there's a good review by Brian Hayes to be found here.

Both the book and the review begin with a fascinating quote:

"The story goes that, late in his life, Guglielmo Marconi had an epiphany. The godfather of radio technology decided that no sound ever dies. It just decays beyond the point that we can detect it with our ears. Any sound was forever recoverable, he believed, with the right device...