Are you listening
ways music was stored then and now
Then:Records
Cassettes
Now
CD'S (compact discs)
Mp3 players
Ipods
Phones
From the early twentieth century, music was listened to by many through the use of the record player. Through advancements in technology, the cassette tape was made available, then the Compact Disk. (CD) The switch was made to mostly digital recordings on cassette tapes and CD’s for convenience, but some of the quality of sound that record players have because of analog recording has been all but lost. Increasingly, the people of todays culture have settled for less quality for the convenience of the newest gadgets and gizmos, though there still remain a few audiophiles that hold on to and strive for the perfect sound. The quality of music has also been impacted by wide availability of music on the Internet.
Analog and digital
Most music today is listened to by a digital device, before there was digital devices music was listened to by a analog device (vinyl's etc) In analog recording, the actual sound waves are carved into a surface of a vinyl record. Sound is produced when the needle of the record player vibrates, and the sound is amplified through speakers. So the sound coming from the record player is directly related to the original sound when it was recorded and every sound is recorded in its entirety. In digital recording, the sound is converted into a sequence of numbers. The numbers can be played back through a CD player, or another form of player that “reads” the numbers and sound is produced. One example to help understand the difference between analog and digital is the comparison of a film camera vs. a digital camera. In a film camera, the film is the exact light representation, what your eyes see, whereas a digital camera is a digital interpretation of the light sensor, converted into numbers just like making a CD.
We traded in better sound for convenience for both recording and listening. There are certainly benefits of recording digitally, which music producer Robert DiFazio explained in an interview.
(http://www.artistshousemusic.org/videos/how+analog+and+digital+recording+techniques+influence+the+recording+process)
Basically, when you’re recording digitally, it’s possible to fix any little mistake. You could pick any place in the entire piece and move things around and make them sound just “right.” Or if the artist messes up, he wouldn’t play the whole piece over again, you could just record over that spot. But is that necessarily good? DiFazio said, “…one can make the argument that digital recordings have lowered the artists’ expectations of themselves.”
This argument grows closer to the truth each day. If music artists record their music digitally, and do start to have lower expectations of themselves, will the ability for these artists to reproduce live music be something of the past?
The comparison to recording analogically is a little different. DiFazio spoke of what it’s like when recording by analog:
“When the clients know that the tape is running, they are on point. They are not expecting me to perform a miracle as soon as I hit stop. ‘Oh I was off key,’ ‘Oh I was out of time,’ ‘Oh can you move this snare drum around.’ No! This is a tape machine, this is no different than what you have in your cassette player. You can’t just cut those individual sounds out and move them around. You have to cut out the whole thing. If you all screw up, then maybe I can fix it. But if just you screw up, then maybe this isn’t a keeper.”
It’s easy to see that recording digitally has changed the way music is produced and the way it is heard. In an interview with Carl Beatty,
The comparison to recording analogically is a little different. DiFazio spoke of what it’s like when recording by analog:
“When the clients know that the tape is running, they are on point. They are not expecting me to perform a miracle as soon as I hit stop. ‘Oh I was off key,’ ‘Oh I was out of time,’ ‘Oh can you move this snare drum around.’ No! This is a tape machine, this is no different than what you have in your cassette player. You can’t just cut those individual sounds out and move them around. You have to cut out the whole thing. If you all screw up, then maybe I can fix it. But if just you screw up, then maybe this isn’t a keeper.”
It’s easy to see that recording digitally has changed the way music is produced and the way it is heard. In an interview with Carl Beatty,
(http://www.artistshousemusic.org/videos/can+digital+recordings+sound+as+good+as+analog)
he explained the difference of sound between digital and analog:
“…what digital doesn’t do well with is low level signals. In terms of ambience and all the things that make the reverb (reverberation) kind of incoherent and out of phase, that’s all low level detail. So if digital is not handling that, or doesn’t know how to handle that stuff, you can hear it in analog.”
He also explained that the average person just doesn’t care if the sound quality is not that great:
“I think it’s personal. I used to say to my students, ‘people don’t care what it sounds like, the average audience doesn’t care what it sounds like. It’s been proven…”
So how did we slide down this slippery slope of poorer quality music? Between the growing availability of music and the advancements in technology, which continue to provide convenience over quality, we have come to where we are today. Yes, the quality of music has changed. But the question remains, will the sound we have now remain the same? Or will technology continue to advance and recover the quality of sound we once had in analog recordings?
“…what digital doesn’t do well with is low level signals. In terms of ambience and all the things that make the reverb (reverberation) kind of incoherent and out of phase, that’s all low level detail. So if digital is not handling that, or doesn’t know how to handle that stuff, you can hear it in analog.”
He also explained that the average person just doesn’t care if the sound quality is not that great:
“I think it’s personal. I used to say to my students, ‘people don’t care what it sounds like, the average audience doesn’t care what it sounds like. It’s been proven…”
So how did we slide down this slippery slope of poorer quality music? Between the growing availability of music and the advancements in technology, which continue to provide convenience over quality, we have come to where we are today. Yes, the quality of music has changed. But the question remains, will the sound we have now remain the same? Or will technology continue to advance and recover the quality of sound we once had in analog recordings?
| Year | Media formats | Recording formats |
|---|---|---|
| 1877 | Phonograph cylinder | Mechanical analog; "hill-and-dale" grooves, vertical stylus motion |
| 1883 | Music roll | Mechanical digital (automated musical instruments) |
| 1895 | Gramophone record | Mechanical analog; lateral grooves, horizontal stylus motion |
| 1898 | Wire recording | Analog; magnetization; DC "bias" |
| 1925 | Electrical cut record | Mechanical analog; electrically cut from amplified microphone signal, lateral grooves, horizontal stylus motion, discs at 7", 10", 12", most at 78 rpm |
| 1930s | Reel-to-Reel, Magnetic Tape | Analog; magnetization; AC "bias" dramatically increases linearity/fidelity, tape speed at 30 ips, later 15 ips and other refined speeds: 7½ ips, 3¾ ips, 1⅞ ips |
| Electrical transcriptions | Mechanical analog; electrically cut from amplified microphone signal, high fidelity sound, lateral or vertical grooves, horizontal or vertical stylus motion, most discs 16" at 33⅓ rpm | |
| 1948 | Vinyl Record | Analog, with preemphasis and other equalization techniques (LP, RIAA); lateral grooves, horizontal stylus motion; discs at 7" (most 45 rpm), 10" and 12" (most 33⅓ rpm) |
| 1957 | Stereophonic Vinyl Record | Analog, with preemphasis and other equalization techniques. Combination lateral/vertical stylus motion with each channel encoded 45 degrees to the vertical. |
| 1962 | 4-Track (Stereo-Pak) | Analog, 1⁄4-inch-wide (6.4 mm) tape, 3¾ in/s, endless loop cartridge. |
| 1963 | Compact Cassette | Analog, with bias. 0.15-inch-wide (3.8 mm) tape, 1⅞ in/s. 1970: introduced Dolby noise reduction. |
| 1965 | 8-Track (Stereo-8) | Analog, ¼ inch wide tape, 3¾ in/s, endless loop cartridge. |
| 1969 | Microcassette | Analog, ⅛ inch wide tape, used generally for notetaking, mostly mono, some stereo (developed in the early 80's). 2.4 cm/s or 1.2 cm/s. |
| Minicassette | Analog, ⅛ inch wide tape, used generally for notetaking, 1.2 cm/s | |
| 1970 | Quadraphonic 8-Track (Quad-8) (Q8) | Analog, ¼ inch wide tape, 3¾ in/s, 4 Channel Stereo, endless loop cartridge. |
| 1971 | Quadraphonic Vinyl Record (CD-4) (SQ Matrix) | Analog. |
| 1975 | Betamax Digital Audio | Digital. |
| Analog. Dolby Stereo cinema surround sound. | ||
| 1976 | Elcaset | Analog. |
| 1978 | Laserdisc | Digital/Analog. |
| 1982 | Compact Disc (CD-DA) | Digital. Linear PCM (LPCM) |
| 1985 | Digital. Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) | |
| 1985 | Digital. Sound Designer (by Digidesign) (SD and DIG formats). | |
| 1986 | High Definition Compatible Digital (HDCD) | Digital. Redbook compatible physical CD containing 20–24 bit information (uses Linear Pulse Code Modulation (LPCM). |
| 1987 | Digital Audio Tape (DAT) | Digital. |
| 1991 | MiniDisc (MD) | Digital. Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding (ATRAC) |
| 1992 | Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) | Digital. |
| Digital. WAVEform (WAV) | ||
| Digital. Dolby Digital surround cinema sound. Also known as Dolby Stereo Digital until 1994. | ||
| 1993 | Digital. Digital Theatre System (DTS), Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS), MPEG-1 Audio Layer III (MP3). | |
| 1994 | Digital. TwinVQ. | |
| 1997 | DVD | Digital. Dolby Digital, Digital Theatre System (DTS) |
| DTS-CD | Digital. DTS Audio | |
| 1999 | DVD-Audio | Digital. Including Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP), Linear PCM (LPCM), Dolby Digital (AC-3) and Digital Theatre System (DTS). |
| Super Audio CD (SACD) | Digital. Direct Stream Digital | |
| Digital. Windows Media Audio (WMA) | ||
| Digital. The True Audio Lossless Codec (TTA) | ||
| 2000 | Digital. Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) | |
| 2001 | Digital. Advanced audio coding (AAC) | |
| 2002 | Digital. Ogg Vorbis | |
| 2003 | DualDisc | Digital. Multiple formats encoded onto the same disc. |
| 2004 | Digital. Apple Lossless (ALE or ALAC) | |
| 2005 | HD DVD | Digital. Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio |
| Digital. OggPCM | ||
| 2006 | Blu-ray Disc | Digital. Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio |
| 2008 | slotMusic | Digital. Usually at 320kbit/s MP3 on microSD or microSDHC |
| Blu-spec CD | Digital. PCM |
As you can see analog was used up untill 1971 then in 1975 the first digital recording was used then in 1982 digital took over analog. This is where all other audio formats came from like mp3 and WAV
