Analogue recording

9

Transcript of Analogue recording

8 milestones in recorded

sound

* In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph – a sheet of tinfoil wrapped around a cylindrical drum, it has a metal stylus attached to one side of a diaphragm and a mouth piece on the other side.

*Stylus vibrates and a groove is embossed on the tinfoil

*When the stylus is moved along groove that has been made, the diaphragm reproduces the recorded sound.

*Later became wax cylinders

*Emil Berliner developed the gramophone

between 1887 and 1893

*Used metal discs rather than cylinders –

covered in lampblack

*Dipped in acid to etch a groove into the metal

*Copies easily made by electroplating the

original positive disc and creating a negative

disc with ridges instead of grooves

*Musicians gather around a horn which recorded

directly onto the discs or cylinders

*Only way to adjust mix was to move musician

closer to or further away from the horn –

acoustical recording

*An electrical signal from a microphone could drive an electromagnetic disc recording device. With the addition of the vacuum tube, the microphone's weak signal could be stepped up to drive the cutter.

*The Western Electric Company developed an electronically amplified, electromagnetic disc cutter of high quality in the early 1920s.

*The new device was marketed to phonograph and record manufacturers and also became the basis of talking films and "transcription" recorders used in radio stations.

Vacuum tube

*Gamma-ferrous oxide in the form of very fine,

elongated particles was coated on plastic tape.

*The German company I. G. Farben improved

coated tapes and introduced them for use with

the AEG Magnetophon in the 1930s.

*Tape has to be cut and spliced to make any

edits

Magnetophon

*Multi-track recording is a process in which tape is divided into multiple tracks parallel to each other

*First development of multi-tracking was stereo sound

*Les Paul experimented with tapes and recorders in the 1950s – this led him to order the first 8 track recorder built by Ampex

*3 track recorders remained in popular use until the mid 1960s – Phil Spector's created many of his ‘Wall of sound’ productions on these.