The experiment in capturing sound on recording media for preservation and reproduction began in earnest during the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s. Many pioneering attempts to record and reproduce sounds were made during the second half of the 19th century - notably the Scott Phonautograph of 1857 - and these efforts culminated in the discovery of the phonograph by Thomas Edison in 1877. Digital recordings appeared in the late 20th century, and has since grown with the popularity of digital music and online streaming services.
The sound recording history - which has evolved in waves, driven by the invention and the introduction of new commercial technologies - can be divided into four major periods:
- "Acoustic" era, 1877 to 1925
- "Electrical" era, 1925 to 1945 (including sound on film)
- the "Magnetic" era, 1945 to 1975
- The "Digital" era, 1975 to the present day.
Video History of sound recording
Ikhtisar
Era akustik (1877 hingga 1925)
The earliest practical recording technology is fully mechanical devices. These recorders typically use large conical horns to collect and focus physical air pressure from sound waves generated by human sound or musical instruments. The sensitive membrane or diaphragm, located at the top of the cone, is connected to an articulated scriber or stylus, and when a changing air pressure moves the diaphragm back and forth, the stylus scratches or inculps the analog sound waves into the recording media movement, such as coated paper rolls, or cylinders or discs coated with soft materials such as wax or soft metal. These early recordings are of course low-fidelity and volume, and capture only a narrow segment of the audible audible spectrum - usually only from about 250 Hz to about 2,500 Hz - so musicians and engineers are forced to adapt to this sonic limitation.. Band periods are often favored by harsh instruments such as trumpets, cornets and trombones, lower register brass instruments (such as tubes and euphonium) replacing bass strings, and wooden beams standing for bass drums; players must also strategically set themselves around the horn to balance the sound, and play as hard as possible. The reproduction of the domestic phonograph is also limited in frequency and volume ranges. By the end of the acoustic era, the disk had become the standard medium for sound recording, and its dominance in the domestic audio market lasted until the end of the 20th century.
Electrical era (1925 to 1945) (including sound on film )
The 'second wave' of the sound recording history was introduced by the introduction of electrical electrical systems of Western Electric microphones, electronic signal booster and electromechanical recorders, adopted by major US record labels in 1925. Voice recordings are now a hybrid process - - Sound can now be captured, reinforced , are screened and electronically balanced, and the disk cutter heads are now electrically powered, but the actual recording process remains essentially mechanical - the signal is still physically etched into the 'master' wax disc, and consumer disks are mass-produced mechanically by stamping electroform the metal made from the master wax becomes a suitable substance, originally a lacquered compound and then polyvinyl plastic. The Western Electric system greatly enhances the loyalty of voice recordings, increasing the range of reproducible frequencies to a much wider band (between 60 Hz and 6000 Hz) and enables a new class of professionals - audio engineers - to capture a fuller, richer and more sound detailed and balanced recording, using multiple microphones connected to multi-channel electronic amplifiers, compressors, filters, and mixers. The electric microphone causes dramatic changes in the singer's style of appearance, leading to the age of "crooner", while electronic amplification has a wide impact in many areas, enabling the development of radio broadcasts, public address systems, and electronically. home recording player-share. In addition, the development of electronic amplifiers for musical instruments now allows quieter instruments such as guitars and bass strings to compete on the same terms with stronger wind and horn instruments, and musicians and composers also begin experimenting with completely new electronic music. instruments such as Theremin, Ondes Martenot, electronic organs, and Hammond Novachord, the first analog polyphonic synthesizer in the world.
In line with this development, several inventors are engaged in the race to develop practical methods of providing sound synchronized with the film. Some early sound films - such as the 1927 landmark film The Jazz Singer - used a large soundtrack recording played on a rotary table that was mechanically interconnected with the projector. In the early 1930s the film industry almost universally adopted sound-on-film technology, in which the audio signal to be recorded was used to modulate a light source imaged into a film moving through a narrow slit, allowing it to be photographed as a variation in the density or width of "sound track" that runs along a special area of ​​the movie. The projector uses stable light and photoelectric cells to convert back variations into electrical signals, which are amplified and sent to speakers behind the scenes. The application of sound-on-film also helps film industry audio engineers to make rapid progress in the process we now know as "multi-tracking", in which multiple audio sources are recorded separately (such as sound, sound effects and background music) can be played simultaneously, mixed together, and synced with action on film to create new audio tracks that are 'mixed' with great sophistication and complexity. One of the most famous examples of composite sounds 'constructed' from that era is the famous "Tarzan yell" created for the Tarzan film series starring Johnny Weissmuller.
Among the massive and often rapid changes that have occurred during the last century of audio recordings, it should be noted that there is one important audio device, invented at the beginning of the "Electrical Era", which has persisted almost unchanged since it was introduced in the 1920s: electro-acoustic transducers , or loudspeaker. The most common form is a dynamic loudspeaker - effectively a dynamic microphone in reverse. This tool usually consists of a shallow cone diaphragm, typically of a material such as concentric rigid wrinkled paper to make it more flexible, firmly on the perimeter, with a coil-moving electromagnetic driving coil attached around its peak. When an audio signal from a recording, microphone, or electrification instrument is flown through the amplifier to the loudspeaker, different electromagnetic fields created in the coil cause it and the cone to be back and forth, and this movement produces audio-frequency pressure waves running in air to our ears, who hear them as sound. Although there are many technological improvements, and other related technologies have been introduced (eg electrostatic loudspeakers), the basic design and function of dynamic loudspeakers has not changed substantially in 90 years, and it remains a very common, accurate and reliable sonic tool for converting electronic audio signals back into an audible voice.
Magnetic Era (1945 to 1975)
The development of the third wave in the audio recording began in 1945, when allied nations gained access to the new German invention - magnetic tape recording. This technology was discovered in the 1930s, but remained limited in Germany (where it was widely used in broadcasting) until the end of World War II. Magnetic tapes provide another dramatic leap in audio allegiance - indeed, Allied observers were first aware of the existence of new technology because they noticed that the audio quality of previously recorded programs was practically indistinguishable from live broadcasts. From 1950 onwards, magnetic tapes quickly became the standard medium of audio master recordings in the radio and music industry, and led to the development of the first hi-fi stereo recordings for the domestic market, the development of multi-track tape tracks for music, and the death of disks as media ultimate mastery for sound. The magnetic tape also carries a radical change from the recording process - allowing for a much longer duration of recording and much higher allegiance than before, and it offers the same remarkable recording of the same plasticity that the film gives to the cinema editor - the sound captured on the tape can now easily manipulated sonicly, edited, and combined in ways that are not possible with disk recording. The experiment reached its early peak in the 1950s with recordings of Les Paul and Mary Ford, which pioneered the use of ribbon editing and "multi-tracking" to create a large sound ensemble and virtual instrument, built entirely from multiple recorded recordings of their sounds and instruments own. Magnetic tapes trigger a rapid and radical expansion in the sophistication of popular music and other genres, allowing composers, producers, engineers, and players to realize the level of previously unattainable intricacies. Other simultaneous advances in audio technology led to the introduction of new consumer formats and audio devices, both on disk and tape, including the development of full-frequency disk reproduction, shellac transformation into polyvinyl plastics for disc manufacture, 33rpm discovery, 12-inch long (LP) and 45rpm 7-inch "single", the introduction of domestic and professional portable cassette recorders (which enable high fidelity recordings from live performances), the popular 4 track cartridge and compact cassette format, and even the world's first "keyboard sampling" - keyboard-based instruments the Chamberlin pioneer tape, and his more famous successor, the Mellotron.
Digital era (1975 to present)
The fourth and current "phase", the "digital" era, has seen a series of the fastest, dramatic and far-reaching changes in the history of audio recordings. In less than 20 years, all the previous recording technologies were quickly replaced by digital voice encodings, enhanced by Sony's Japanese electronics company in the 1970s. Unlike all previous technologies, which capture continuous analogs of recorded sound, digital recording captures sound by using a series of very dense and fast sound samples. When played back through a digital-to-analog converter, these audio samples are combined to form a continuous sound stream. The first digitally recorded digital album, Ry Cooder Bop 'Til You Drop , was released in 1979, and since then, the recording of digital sound and reproduction is rapidly becoming a new standard on every level, from the studio professional recording to a hi-fi home.
Although a number of short-lived "hybrid" studio and consumer technologies emerged in this period (eg Digital Audio Tape or DAT, which captured samples of digital signals to standard magnetic tapes), Sony assured the advantages of its new digital recording system by introducing, along with Philips, today's most sophisticated consumer audio - a digital compact disc (CD). The Compact disc quickly replaced both single 12 "albums and 7" as the new standard consumer format, and ushered in a new era of consumer high-fidelity audio - a small, portable and durable CD, and they can reproduce the entire audible sound spectrum , with unlimited dynamic range, perfect clarity, and no distortion. Because the CD is encoded and read optically, using a laser beam, there is no physical contact between the disc and the playback mechanism, so a well-maintained CD can be played repeatedly, with no degradation or loss of loyalty. CDs also represent considerable progress in both the physical size of the medium, and their storage capacity - the phonograph record is only practically able to store about 50 minutes of audio, as they are physically limited by the size of the disk itself and the density of the grooves that can be cut into it - the longer the recording , the closer the grooves are and thus the lower the overall allegiance; CDs, on the other hand they are less than half the size of the entire LP 12 "long format, but offer about twice the average duration of LP, with up to 80 minutes of audio.
Compact Discs almost completely dominated the consumer audio market in the late 20th century, but in a decade longer, rapid development in computing technology made it very redundant in just a few years by the most significant new discovery in the history of audio recording. - digital audio files (.wav,.mp3 and other formats). When combined with the newly developed digital signal compression algorithm, which greatly reduces file size, digital audio files are rapidly dominating the domestic market, thanks to commercial innovations such as Apple iTunes media apps, and their very popular iPod portable media players.
However, the introduction of digital audio files, according to the rapid development in home computing, soon led to unexpected consequences - widespread audio distribution and other digital media files. Uploading and downloading large amounts of high speed digital media files is facilitated by freeware file sharing technologies like Napster and BitTorrent. The simultaneous development of a high-volume private data storage network, combined with increased internet signal speed and continuous improvement in data storage devices, triggered an explosion in the illegal distribution of copyrighted digital media. This has caused major concerns among record labels and copyright owners such as ASCAP, which has been very pressing for government agencies to make trans-national efforts to shut down data storage and file sharing networks, and to prosecute site operators, and even individual downloaders.
Although violations remain a significant issue for copyright owners, digital audio development has many benefits for consumers. In addition to facilitating the transfer and storage of digital audio files with high volume, low cost, this new technology has also fueled an explosion in the availability of so-called "catalog back titles" stored in the archive of record labels, thanks to the fact that labels can now convert old recordings and distribute it digitally at a cost less than the albums that are physically issued in LPs or CDs. Digital audio has also enabled dramatic improvements in the recovery and remastering of acoustic and pre-digital recording, and even freeware consumer-level digital software can very effectively eliminate scratches, surface sounds and other unwanted sonic artifacts from the old 78rpm and vinyl recordings and very improve the sound quality of all recordings except those that are badly damaged. In the field of consumer-level digital data storage, the ongoing trend toward capacity building and cost reduction means that consumers can now acquire and store large quantities of high-quality digital media (audio, video, games, and other applications), and build media libraries comprising dozens or even hundreds of thousands of songs, albums, or videos - collections that, for all but the richest, will be physically and financially impossible to collect in such numbers if they are in 78 or LP, but which can now be loaded on a storage device not bigger than the average hardcover book.
Digital Audio Files marks the end of one era in recording and beginning of the other. Digital files effectively eliminate the need to create or use purpose-built recording media (disks, or reels of recordings, etc.) as the primary means of capturing, creating and distributing commercial sound recordings. Along with the development of this digital file format, dramatic advances in home computing and rapid Internet expansion mean that digital sound recordings can now be captured, processed, reproduced, distributed and stored entirely electronically, on various magnetic and optical media recordings, and these can be distributed almost anywhere in the world, without losing loyalty, and most importantly, without first having to transfer these files to some form of permanent media recorder for shipping and selling.
The music streaming service has gained popularity since the late 2000s. Streaming audio does not require listeners to download or have audio files, but instead they listen through the internet. The streaming service offers an alternative method of consuming music and some follow the freemium business model. Freemium models used by many music streaming services, such as Spotify and Apple Music, provide limited amount of content for free, and then premium services for payment. There are two categories where the streaming service is categorized, radio or on demand. Streaming services such as Pandora using radio models allow users to select playlists but do not listen to certain songs, while services like Apple Music allow users to listen to both individual songs and previously created playlists.
Maps History of sound recording
Acoustic recording
The earliest methods of recording and reproduction involve direct recording of a live performance to the recording medium through a fully mechanical process, often called an "acoustic recording." In standard procedures used until the mid-1920s, the sound generated by the performance vibrates the diaphragm with the recording stylus connected to it while the stylus cuts the groove into a soft recording medium that rotates underneath. To make this process as efficient as possible, the diaphragm lies at the top of a hollow cone that serves to collect and focus acoustic energy, with the players gathering around the other end. Records of equilibrium are achieved empirically. A player being recorded too strongly or not strong enough to be moved from or closer to the mouth of the cone. The number and type of instruments that can be recorded is limited. The brass instruments, which are well recorded, are often replaced with instruments such as cello and bass, which are not. In some early jazz recordings, wooden beams are used instead of drum bass, which can easily burden the recording diaphragm.
Phonautograph
In 1857, ÃÆ' â € ° douard-LÃÆ' Â © on Scott de Martinville invented the fonautograph, the first device to record sound waves as they pass through the air. It was intended only for visual recording studies and could not play back the sound. The recording medium is a sheet of soot-covered paper that is wrapped around a rotating cylinder carried on a threaded stem. A stylus, attached to the diaphragm through a series of levers, traces the line through the soot, creating a graphical recording of the diaphragm movement as it is actually pushed back and forth by the variation of audio frequency in air pressure.
In the spring of 1877, another inventor, Charles Cros, suggested that the process could be reversed by using photoengraving to transform the traced line into a groove that would guide the stylus, causing the original stylus to be re-invented, forwarded to the associated diaphragm. , and sent back into the air as a sound. An American inventor soon outperformed this idea, and it was not until 1887 that another inventor, Emile Berliner, actually photographed the phonautograph record into metal and played it back.
Scott's early recordings languished in French archives until 2008, when the experts wanted to revive the sounds captured in this recording and other early experimental recording types that tracked it. Instead of using rugged 19th century technology to create playable versions, they are scanned into computers and software used to convert their voice modulation traces into digital audio files. A short quote from two French songs and an Italian reading, all recorded in 1860, is the most substantial result.
Phonograph/Gramophone
The phonograph, created by Thomas Edison in 1877, can record sound and play it back. The earliest sold phonograph types were recorded on thin sheets of aluminum paper wrapped with flanged metal cylinders. The stylus connected to the vibrating diaphragm induces foil into the groove when the cylinder is rotated. The vibration of the stylus is at an appropriate angle to the recording surface, so the indentation depth varies with the change in audio frequency at the air pressure that carries the sound. This setting is known as a vertical or hill-and-dale recording. Sound can be played back by tracing the stylus along the recorded groove and acoustically combining the resulting vibration into the surrounding air through the diaphragm and the so-called "reinforcing horn".
The raw tin foil is proved to be of little use except as a novelty. It was not until the late 1880s that a better and more useful phonograph form was marketed. New machines are recorded on hollow wax cylinders that are easily moved and the grooves are carved onto the surface rather than being indexed. The targeted use is business communication, and in that context the cylinder format has several advantages. When entertainment use proves to be a real source of profit, a seemingly negligible disadvantage becomes a major problem: the difficulty of making large-volume copies of cylinders.
Initially, the cylinder is copied by connecting acoustically the rotating engine to one or more recording machines via a flexible tube, a setting that lowers the audio quality of the copy. Then, the pantograph mechanism is used, but it can only produce about 25 copies of the fair before the original is too outdated. During the recording sessions, as many as a dozen machines can be aligned in front of the players to record some original work. However, one "take" will eventually produce only a few hundred best copies, so players are booked for marathon recording sessions where they have to repeat their most popular number repeatedly. In 1902, a successful printing process for the manufacture of previously recorded cylinders has been developed.
The wax cylinder got a competitor with the appearance of a Gramophone, patented by Emile Berliner in 1887. The recording stylus gramophone tone is horizontal, parallel to the recording surface, resulting in a zigzag groove of constant depth. This is known as lateral recording. The original Berliner patent shows a lateral recording engraved around the cylinder surface, but in practice it chooses the disk format. Gramophones are immediately marketed only intended to play disc entertainment previously recorded and can not be used for recording. The spiral flow on the flat surface of a disk is relatively easy to replicate: negative metal electrons from the original recording can be used to eradicate hundreds or thousands of copies before they run out. Initially, copies are made of hard rubber, and sometimes from celluloid, but soon a shell-based compound is adopted.
"Gramophone", the Berlin brand name, was abandoned in the US in 1900 due to legal complications, with the result that in Gramophone and Gramophone UK, along with phonograph records and players made by other manufacturers, have long been brought under umbrella. the term "phonograph," a word Edison's competitor avoided but never his trademark, is only a general term that he introduces and applies to cylinders, discs, tapes, and other formats capable of carrying voice modulated grooves. In the United Kingdom, the proprietary use of the Gramophone name continued for a decade until, in the case of the court, it was decided to be generic and freely usable by competing disk recorders, with the result that in English English was a record called " "LPs" are traditionally assumed to be cylinders.
Not all cylinder records are the same. They are made of various hard wax or hard or early plastic formulations, sometimes in unusual sizes; not all use the same flowing tone; and not all of them are recorded at the same speed. The old brown cylinder is usually cut to about 120 rpm, while the cylinder then runs at 160 rpm for clearer and louder sounds with reduced maximum play time cost. As a medium for entertainment, the cylinder had lost the format war with the discs in 1910, but the production of the entertainment cylinder did not completely stop until 1929 and the use of formats for the purposes of business dictates persisted until the 1950s.
Records of discs, too, are sometimes made in unusual sizes, or from unusual materials, or deviated from the format norms of their era in some substantial way. The speed at which the disc disk is rotated is finally standardized at about 78 rpm, but other speeds are sometimes used. Around 1950, slower speed became standard: 45, 33 1/3, and rarely used 16 2/3 rpm. The raw materials for discs change from shellac to vinyl, although vinyl has been used for some special purpose notes since the early 1930s and about 78 rpm shellac records were still made in the late 1950s.
Electrical recording
Until the mid 1920s records were played on pure mechanical recording players which are usually supported by spring motor. The sound is "amplified" by external or internal horns coupled to the diaphragm and stylus, although there is no real reinforcement: the horn only increases the efficiency by which the diaphragm vibrations are transmitted to the open air. The recording process is essentially the same as the non-electronic setting operating in reverse, but with a recording stylus that carves the grooves into the soft wax master disk and is carried slowly inside through the feed mechanism.
The advent of electrical recording in 1925 made it possible to use a microphone that was sensitive to capture sound and greatly improved the quality of audio recording. A wider range of frequencies can be recorded, the high and low frequency balance can be controlled by a basic electronic filter, and the signal can be amplified to the optimum level to drive the recording stylus. The leading record labels switched to the electricity process in 1925 and the rest soon followed, though one person tucked in the US lasted until 1929.
There was a period of nearly five years, from 1925 to 1930, when the ultimate "audiophile" technology for home sound reproduction consisted of a combination of electronically recorded recordings with specially developed Victor Orthophonic Victrola, an acoustic phonograph that employed waveguide and horn techniques folded to provide the frequency response is quite flat. The first reinforced electronic recorders reached the market just a few months later, around early 1926, but at first they were much more expensive and their audio quality was interrupted by their primitive loudspeakers; they did not become common until the late 1930s.
Electrical recording increases the flexibility of the process, but its performance is still cut directly to the recording medium, so if an error is made, the entire recording becomes spoiled. Disk-to-disc editing is possible, using multiple turntables to play a part of different "retrieval" and recording it to a new master disk, but replacing the source with split-second accuracy becomes difficult and lower sound quality is inevitable, so unless used in editing some early sound films and radio recordings was rarely done.
The electric recording makes it more feasible to record one part to disk and then play it back while playing another part, recording the two parts to the second disc. These and concept-related techniques, known as overdubbing, allow the studio to create "show" recordings featuring one or more artists each singing several sections or playing some parts of the instrument and therefore can not duplicated by the same. artist or artist that appears live. The first commercial record published using overdubbing was released by the Victor Talking Machine Company in the late 1920s. However overdubbing is of limited use until the advent of audio recording. The use of overdubbing tape was pioneered by Les Paul in the 1940s.
Magnetic recording
Recording magnetic wire
Wire recording or magnetic wire recordings are analog types of audio storage where magnetic recording is made on thin steel or stainless steel wire.
The wire is pulled rapidly on the recording head, which pulls each point along the wire according to the intensity and polarity of the electric audio signal supplied to the recording head at that time. By then drawing a wire on the same or similar head when the head is not supplied with an electrical signal, the varying magnetic field presented by the wire passes induces the same electrical current varying across the head, recreating the original signal at a rate reduction.
Recording of magnetic wire is replaced by magnetic tape recording, but devices using one or the other of these media have been more or less simultaneously in development for many years before widespread use. The principles and electronics involved are almost identical. Wire recordings initially have the advantage that the recording medium itself is fully developed, while recording tapes are being held back by the need to improve the materials and methods used to produce the tape.
Magnetic recording was shown in principle as early as 1898 by Valdemar Poulsen in his telegraph. The recording of magnetic wire, and its successor, magnetic tape recording, involves the use of a thermagnetic medium that travels at a constant speed through the recording head. An electrical signal, analogous to the sound to be recorded, is fed to the recording head, inducing a magnetization pattern similar to the signal. The playback head can take a magnetic field change from the tape and turn it into an electrical signal.
With the addition of electronic amplification developed by Curt Stille in the 1920s, the telegraph evolved into a popular wire recorder for voice recording and dictation during the 1940s and 1950s. The quality of the wire recorder reproduction is significantly lower than that achieved by disc recording disc technology. There are also practical difficulties, such as the tendency of the wire to become tangled or growled. Connection can be done by uniting the ends of cut wire, but the result is not very satisfactory.
On Christmas Day, 1932 the British Broadcasting Corporation first used a steel tape recorder for their broadcast. The tool used is the Marconi-Stille recorder, a large and dangerous machine that uses a sharpened steel band. The tape is 0.1 inches (2.5 mm) wide and 0.003 inches (0.076 mm) thick running at 5 feet per second (1.5 m/s) past the recording head and reproducing. This means that the length of the band required for the half-hour program is nearly 1.8 miles (2.9 km) and the full reel weighs 55 pounds (25 kg).
Magnetic tape sound recording
Engineers at AEG, working with chemical giant IG Farben, created the world's first practical magnetic tape recorder, 'K1', first shown in 1935. During World War II, an engineer at the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft invented AC biasing techniques. With this technique, unheard high-frequency signals, typically in the 50 to 150 kHz range, are added to the audio signal before being applied to the recording head. Biasing radically improves the sound quality of magnetic tape recording. In 1943 AEG had developed a stereo tape recorder.
During the war, the Allies were aware of radio broadcasts that appeared to be transcriptions (largely because of Richard H. Ranger's work), but the audio quality was indistinguishable from live broadcast and their duration was much longer than was possible with 78 rpm discs. At the end of the war, the Allies captured a number of German Magnetophon recorders from Radio Luxembourg which aroused great interest. This recorder combines all the key technological features of analog magnetic recording, particularly the use of high-frequency bias.
The development of magnetic tape recorders in the late 1940s and early 1950s was associated with the Brush Development Company and licensee, Ampex; the equally important development of the magnetic tape media itself is led by the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing company (now known as 3M).
American audio engineer John T. Mullin and entertainer Bing Crosby are key players in the commercial development of magnetic tape. Mullin served in the US Army Signal Corps and posted it to Paris in the final months of World War II; the unit was tasked with finding out everything they could about German radio and electronics, including the investigation of claims that Germany had experimented with high-energy radio rays as a tool to disable the electrical system of aircraft. The Mullin unit quickly assembled a collection of hundreds of low-quality magnetic dictators, but it was a chance visit to a studio in Bad Neuheim near Frankfurt while investigating radio rays that produced real gifts.
Mullin was given two high-fidelity AEG 'Magnetophon' recorders and fifty rolls of tape. He told them to be sent home and for the next two years he worked on the machine constantly, modifying them and improving their performance. The ultimate goal is to attract the interest of Hollywood studios in using magnetic tapes for movie soundtrack recording.
Mullin gave two public demonstrations of his machine, and they caused a sensation among American audio professionals - many listeners do not believe that what they hear is not a live show. With luck, a second demonstration of Mullin was held at the MGM studio in Hollywood and in attendance that day was Bing Crosby's engineering director, Murdo Mackenzie. He arranged for Mullin to meet Crosby and in June 1947 he gave Crosby a personal demonstration of his magnetic tape recorder.
Crosby was stunned by the incredible sound quality and immediately saw the huge commercial potential of the new machines. The live music was standard for American radio at the time and the main radio network did not allow the use of disc footage in many programs due to its relatively poor sound quality. But Crosby did not like the live broadcast regiment, preferring the casual atmosphere of the recording studio. He had asked NBC to let him re-record the 1944-45 series on the transcription discs, but the network refused, so Crosby had resigned from live radio for a year, returning for the 1946-47 season reluctantly.
The Mullin recorder came right at the right time. Crosby realizes that the new technology will allow him to record his radio show with sound quality that matches the live broadcast, and that this recording can be played multiple times without any significant loss of quality. Mullin was asked to record one show as a test and was soon hired as chief engineer of Crosby to re-record the rest of the series.
Crosby became the first American music star to use recordings for pre-recorded radio broadcasts, and the first to master commercial recording on tape. The Crosby radio show, recorded painstakingly, was edited through ribbon connections to give them unprecedented speed and flow on the radio. Mullin even claimed to have been the first to use "canned laughter"; at the urging of Crosby's chief writer Bill Morrow, he entered the laughter segment from the previous show into a joke later that did not go well.
Intrigued to use the new recorder as soon as possible, Crosby invested $ 50,000 of his own money into Ampex, and the attention of six small men soon became the world's leader in recording development, revolutionizing radio and recording with the famous Ampex Model 200 tape deck, issued in 1948 and developed directly from the modified Magnetophones Mullin.
Multitrack recording
The next major development in magnetic tape is multitrack recording, where the tape is split into several parallel tracks to each other. Since they are carried on the same media, the tracks remain in perfect sync. The first development in multitracking is stereo sound, which divides the recording head into two tracks. First developed by German audio engineer ca. 1943, a 2-song recording was quickly adopted for modern music in the 1950s as it allowed signals from two or more separate microphones to be recorded simultaneously, allowing stereoponic recordings to be created and edited comfortably. (The first stereo record, on disk, was made in the 1930s but never published commercially.) Stereo (either true, stereo two microphones or multimixed) quickly became the norm for classic commercial recordings and radio broadcasts, pop music and jazz recordings continued to be published in monophonic sounds until the mid-1960s.
Much of the credit for the development of multitrack recording went to guitarist, composer and technician Les Paul, who also helped design the famous electric guitar that bears his name. His experiments with cassettes and recorders in the early 1950s led him to order the first eight songs from Ampex, and his pioneering recording with his wife, singer Mary Ford, was the first to use multitracking techniques. to record separate elements of the music asynchronously - that is, separate elements can be recorded at different times. Paul's technique allows him to listen to the tracks he has recorded and record new parts in time next to them.
Multitrack recording was soon taken on a limited basis by Ampex, which soon produced a 3-track commercial recorder. This proved particularly useful for popular music, as they allow backing music to be recorded on two tracks (either to allow overdubbing of separate parts, or to create full stereo backing tracks) while a third track is provided for the main vocalist. The three-track recorders remained in widespread use until the mid-1960s and many famous pop recordings - including Phil Spector's "War of Sound" movie production and early Motown hits - were recorded on the Ampex 3-track recorder. Engineer Tom Dowd was among the first to use multitrack recording for popular music production while working for Atlantic Records during the 1950s.
The next important development is the 4-track recording. The advent of this enhanced system gave recording engineers and musicians much greater flexibility to record and overdubbing, and 4-track was the studio standard for most of the 1960s. Many of the most famous recordings by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were recorded on 4-track, and engineers at Abbey Road Studios in London became highly proficient in a technique called "mix reduction" in England and "bounced down" in the UK. Country, where multiple tracks are recorded onto one 4-track machine and then mixed together and transferred (bounced down) to a second 4-track engine track. In this way, it is possible to record dozens of separate trajectories and incorporate them into completed recordings with great complexity.
All the Beatles classic recordings of the mid-1960s, including the album Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Pepper's Lonely Band Band , recorded in this way. There are limitations, however, due to the buildup of noise during the bounce-down process, and the Abbey Road engineers are still notorious for their ability to create solid multitrack recording while keeping background noise to a minimum.
4-track tape also enables the development of quadraphonic sound, where each of the four tracks is used to simulate a full 360 degree surround sound. A number of albums were released both in stereo and quadrophonic formats in the 1970s, but the 'quad' failed to gain widespread commercial acceptance. Although now regarded as a gimmick, it is a direct predecessor of the surround sound technology that has become standard in many modern home theater systems.
In today's professional settings, such as studios, audio engineers can use 24 or more tracks for their recording, using one or more tracks for each instrument being played.
The combination of the ability to edit via splicing tape and the ability to record multiple tracks revolutionized studio recordings. It became the practice of recording public studios to record on multiple tracks, and rise up afterwards. Convenience of ribbon editing and multitrack recording led to the rapid adoption of magnetic tape as the main technology for recording of commercial music. Although 33 1/3 rpm and 45 rpm vinyl records are the dominant consumer format, tapes are usually made first on tape, then transferred to disk, with Bing Crosby leading the adoption of this method in the United States.
Further developments
Analog magnetic tape recorders introduce noise, usually called "hiss tape", caused by the size of the magnetic particles confined to the tape. There is a direct tradeoff between noise and economy. The signal-to-sound ratio increases at higher speeds and with wider tracks, and decreases at lower speeds and with narrower tracks.
In the late 1960s, the equipment reproduced the disk so well that the audiophile soon became aware that some of the sounds heard on the recording were not surface disturbances or deficiencies in their equipment, but resulted in hiss ribbons. Some specialist companies began to make "recording directly to disk", created by giving microphone signals directly to the disk cutter (after amplification and mixing), basically back to the recording method directly before the War. These recordings never became popular, but they dramatically demonstrated the magnitude and importance of the sizzling recording problem.
Prior to 1963, when Philips introduced the Compact audio cassette, almost all cassette recordings use the reel-to-reel format (also called "open reel"). Previous attempts to pack the tape in comfortable tapes that need not be sewn with limited success; the most successful is the 8-track cartridge that is used primarily in cars for playback only. Philips Compact's audio tapes add much needed comfort to the recording format and a decade later began to dominate the consumer market, although it remained lower in quality than the open reel format.
In the 1970s, advances in solid-state electronics made the design and marketing of more sophisticated analog circuits economically viable. This led to a number of attempts to reduce the sizzling tape through the use of various forms of volume compression and expansion, the most famous and commercially successful into several systems developed by Dolby Laboratories. This system divides the frequency spectrum into multiple bands and applies volume compression/expansion independently to each band (Engineers now often use the term "development" to refer to this process). Dolby system is very successful in increasing effective dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratio of analog audio recording; for all intents and purposes, the sounding tape hiss can be removed. The original Dolby A is only used in professional recordings. Successors find use in professional and consumer formats; Dolby B became almost universal for recorded music on tapes. Subsequent forms, including Dolby C, (and short-lived Dolby S) were developed for home use.
In the 1980s, digital recording methods were introduced, and analogue tape recording gradually evacuated, although it did not disappear in any way. (Many professional studios, especially those serving clients with large budgets, using analog recorders for multitracking and/or mixdown.) Digital audio bands have never been as important as consumer recording media in part because of legal complications arising from "piracy" fears on the part of the company recording. They opposed magnetic tape recording when it was first made available to consumers, but technical difficulties conjured recording levels, excessive distortion, and residual tape scraping high enough that the reproduction of unlicensed magnetic tapes had never been an insurmountable commercial problem. With digital methods, copy records can be exact, and copyright infringement may have become a serious commercial problem. Digital tape is still used in professional situations and DAT variants have found home in computer data backup applications. Many professional and home recorders now use hard-disk-based systems to record, burn final mixes to CDs that can be recorded (CD-R).
Most Police forces in the United Kingdom (and elsewhere) still use analog analog cassette systems to record Police Interviews as they provide media that are less susceptible to alleged harassment.
Recording on movie
The first attempt to record sound to optical media took place around 1900. Prior to the use of sound recordings in films, the theater would have an orchestra directly present during silent films. The musicians will sit in the pit below the screen and will provide background noise and set the mood for whatever happens in the movie. In 1906, Eugene Augustin Lauste applied for a patent to record Sound-on-film, but preceded his time. In 1923, Lee de Forest applied for a patent to record the film; he also made a number of short experimental films, mostly from vaudeville artists. William Fox began releasing a voice-in-film newsreel in 1926, the same year that Warner Bros. released Don Juan with music and sound effects recorded on the disc, as well as a series of short films with full-sound synchronized on disc. In 1927, the sound film The Jazz Singer was released; Although it was not the first sound film, it made an incredible hit and made the public and the film industry realize that sound movies are more than just novelty.
Jazz Singer uses a process called Vitaphone that involves synchronizing film projected onto sound recorded on disk. This is basically the same as playing a phonograph record, but it was recorded with the best electric technology at the time. The audience used for acoustic and recording phonographs will, at the theater, have heard something resembling 1950 "high fidelity".
However, in the days of analog technology, there is no process involving a separate disk that can store synchronization appropriately or reliably. Vitaphone was quickly replaced by a technology that recorded an optical soundtrack directly to the side of the movie strip. It was the dominant technology from the 1930s through the 1960s and is still used in 2013 even though the analog soundtrack is replaced by digital sound in movie formats.
There are two types of synchronized, optical and magnetic film soundtracks. The optical sound track is a visual appearance of the sound waveform and provides sound through the light and optical sensors inside the projector. The magnetic sound tracks are basically the same as those used in conventional analogue band recording.
Magnetic soundtracks can be combined with moving images but this creates abrupt discontinuity because of the offset of the audio track relative to the image. Whether optical or magnetic, the audio pickup should be located a few inches in front of the projection lamp, shutter shutter and drive. Usually there is a flywheel also to smooth the motion of the film to remove the flutter that should be generated from the negative pulldown mechanism. If you have films with magnetic paths, you should keep them away from strong magnetic sources, such as televisions. This can weaken or remove magnetic sound signals. The magnetic noise at the base of the cellulose acetate film is also more susceptible to vinegar syndrome than film only with images.
For optical recording on film there are two methods used. Variable density recording uses changes in the darkness of the soundtrack side of the film to represent sound waves. Variable area recording uses a dark strip width change to represent sound waves.
In both cases, the light transmitted through the film section corresponds to the soundtrack changes in intensity, proportional to the original sound, and the light is not projected on the screen but converted into electrical signals by the light-sensitive device.
The optical soundtrack is susceptible to the same type of degradation that affects images, such as scratching and copying.
Unlike the movie images that create the illusion of continuity, the soundtrack is continuous. This means that if a movie with a combined soundtrack is cut and connected, the image will be cut neatly but the sound track will most likely produce a cracking sound. Fingerprints on the film can also result in cracking or interference.
In the late 1950s, the cinema industry, desperate to deliver a theatrical experience that would excel in television, introduced widescreen processes such as Cinerama, Todd-AO, and CinemaScope. These processes at the same time introduce technical improvements to sound, generally involving the use of multitrack magnetic sounds, which are recorded on the laminated oxide lines of the film. In subsequent decades, gradual evolution occurred with more and more cinema installing various forms of magnetic sound equipment.
In the 1990s, digital audio systems were introduced and came into force. In some of those recorded sounds recorded again on a separate disk, such as in Vitaphone; others use digital and optical sound tracks on the movie itself. The digital process can now achieve reliable and flawless synchronization.
Digital recording
The first digital audio recorder is the reel-to-reel deck introduced by companies such as Denon (1972), Soundstream (1979) and Mitsubishi. They use digital technology known as PCM recording. However, in a few years, many studios use devices that encode digital audio data into standard video signals, which are then recorded on U-matic or other video recording recorders, using standard video rotating-head technology. The same technology is used for consumer formats, Digital Audio Tape (DAT) that uses spinning heads on narrow bands contained in tapes. DAT records at sampling rates of 48 kHz or 44.1 kHz, the latter being the same level used on compact discs. The bit depth is 16 bits, also the same as the compact disc. DAT is a failure in the consumer audio field (too expensive, too fussy, and paralyzed by anti-copy rules), but DAT is becoming popular in studios (especially home studios) and radio stations. The failed digital recording system is Digital Compact Cassette (DCC).
In the few years after the introduction of digital recordings, multitrack recorders (using stationary heads) are being produced for use in professional studios. In the early 1990s, relatively inexpensive multitrack digital recorders were introduced for use in home studios; they re-record on videocassette. The most prominent of this type of recorder is ADAT. Developed by Alesis and first released in 1991, the ADAT machine is capable of recording 8 digital audio tracks to a single S-VHS video cassette. ADAT machines are still very common fixtures in professional studios and homes around the world.
In the consumer market, cassettes and gramophones are mostly replaced by compact discs (CDs) and less minidisc. This recording medium is entirely digital and requires complicated electronics to be played back.
Digital sound files can be stored on any computer storage media. The development of MP3 audio file formats, and the legal issues involved in copying those files, has driven most of the innovations in music distribution since its introduction in the late 1990s.
Because hard disk capacity and computer CPU speed increased in the late 1990s, hard disk recording became more popular. In early 2005 hard disk recording took two forms. One is the use of a standard desktop or laptop computer, with an adapter for audio encoding into two or more digital audio tracks. This adapter can be an in-the-box sound card or an external device, either connected to an in-box interface card or connecting to a computer via a USB or Firewire cable. Other common forms of hard disk recording use a special recorder containing analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters and one or two removable hard drives for data storage. Such a recorder, which packs 24 tracks in several rack space units, is actually a one-purpose computer, which in turn can be connected to a standard computer for editing.
The revival of vinyl
Vinyl recordings, or long playing (LP) records, have become popular again as a way to consume music despite the emergence of digital media. More than 15 million units sold between 2008 and 2012, their sales reached their highest level in 2012 since 1993. Popular artists have started releasing their albums on vinyl, and stores like Urban Outfitters and Whole Foods have started selling it. Popular music companies, such as Sony, have started producing LP for the first time since 1989 as the media is becoming more popular. However, some companies face production problems because there are only 16 recording factories that currently function in the United States.
Technique
The analog recorder makes it possible to delete or record previous recordings so that errors can be fixed. Another advantage of recording on tape is the ability to cut recordings and recombine them together. This allows recording to be edited. Record pieces can be removed, or rearranged. See also audio editing, audio mixing, multitrack recording.
The advent of electronic instruments (especially keyboards and synthesizers), effects and other instruments have led to the importance of MIDI in recording. For example, using MIDI time codes, it is possible to have different equipment 'triggers' without direct human intervention at the time of recording.
In more recent times, computers (digital audio workstations) have found an increasing role in the recording studio, because their use facilitates the chopping and rewinding task, and allows for instantaneous changes, such as section duplication, effect addition and rearrangement of recording sections.
See also
- Binaural record
- High fidelity
- Microphone technique
- Audio format timeline
- Voice-Laboratory Volta Records
Note
References
- Bennett, H. Stith, Active Being a Rock Musician , Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980. ISBNÃ, 0-87023-311-4
- Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Learn Popular Music . Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBNÃ, 0-335-15275-9.
Further reading
- Milner, Greg, "Perfecting Sound Forever: Aural History of Music Recording", Faber & amp; Faber; 1 issue (June 9th, 2009) ISBN 978-0-571-21165-4. Cf. p.Ã, 14 about H. Stith Bennett and "awareness of recording".
- "Recording Technology History: revised record 6 July 2005, by Steven Schoenherr", University of San Diego (archived 2010)
External links
- First Voice (audio file of the earliest recorded sound, dating back to the 1850s)
- Song recording guide
- Recording History - History of Sound Recording Technology
- Listen The Hen Convention - The oldest recorded voice still in Australia (1897) at National Film and Sound Archive australianscreen online
- Voice recording history - Magnetic Sound Recording Museum
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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