Steve Albini, a rock musician and revered audio engineer who played a singular role in the development of the sound of alternative rock music in the 1980s, the ’90s and beyond — recording acclaimed albums by Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Pixies and hundreds of others — while becoming an outspoken critic of the music industry, died on Tuesday at his home in Chicago.

The cause was a heart attack, according to Taylor Hales of Electrical Audio, the studio in Chicago that Mr. Albini founded in 1997.

With a sharp vision for how a band should be recorded, and an even sharper tongue for anything he deemed mediocre or compromised, Mr. Albini was one of rock’s most acerbic wits.

“Never have I seen four cows more anxious to be led around by their nose rings,” he wrote after recording “Surfer Rosa,” the seminal 1988 album by the Boston-based band Pixies, which became one the classics of 1980s alt-rock.

(Even so, Mr. Albini remained a close friend of Kim Deal, the bassist in that band, and recorded her solo project, the Breeders.)

As a musician, Mr. Albini led the bands Big Black in the 1980s and, since 1992, Shellac, both of which venerated loud, raw guitars and angry, screaming vocals.

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