History Of Sound Recording Research Articles

‘Raising the State of the Art’

The history of sound recording has often emphasized technological developments, leaving aside artistic and aesthetic aspects of recorded works, commercial opportunities, the listening practices of consumers of recordings, and listening expectations. This article examines the experience of an innovative company, Soundstream Inc., which in the late 1970s and early 1980s marketed the first professional digital sound recording and editing services. While technologically dominant between 1978 and 1982, and part of a revolution in recording that changed expectations about recordings to include digital editing and enhancement of the original performance, Soundstream failed to succeed financially because of the economic conjuncture in which it was launched, and its inability to develop services that could find a market as the electronics industry moved away from limited, specialized products and towards mass marketing to consumers.

Off the record: the technology and culture of sound recording in America

The most fascinating aspect of Off the Record involves tracing the complex paths by which devices that are now commonplace originally came into being, gained markets, and slowly evolved. Each chapter is filled with brave hopes, false starts, mistaken social assumptions, and solutions that were almost, but not quite, right. Morton does a fine job of demonstrating multiple contingencies in the by-no-means-certain evolution of now-familiar technologies. --Jeffery L. Meikle, American Studies, University of Texas at Austin David Morton examines the process of invention, innovation, and diffusion of communications technology, using the history of sound recording as the focus. Recording culture in America emerged, Morton writes, not through the dictates of the technology alone but in complex ways that were contingent upon the actions of users. Readers will learn, for example, that the equipment to create the telephone answering machine has been around for a century, but that the ownership and use of these items was a hotly contested issue in the telephone industry at the turn of the twentieth-century. As a result, its commercial development was stifled for decades. Morton illustrates his broad-based approach to sound technology with five case studies: the phonograph record, recording in the radio business, the dictation machine, the telephone answering machine, and home taping. Each of these case studies dispels the popular notion that recording is all about music, and they tell a much more complete story of sound recording technology and history. David Morton is research historian for the IEEE History Center at Rutgers University.

America on record: a history of recorded sound

America on record: a history of recorded sound

Highlights of the History of Sound Recording on Film in Europe

The author presents an evocation of the most important steps in the development in Europe of sound-recording techniques suitable for recording on film. It is interesting to note that, in many ways, the evolution of experiments in sound-recording techniques ran parallel to that in the United States. On the other hand, in some areas, radically different routes were traveled. An interesting example of highly original inventive thinking was the hot-cathode microphone, called Kathodophone. It is also noteworthy that the Kerr cell, which in the United States was not believed to be useful for sound recording, was in routine, practical use in the German motion-picture industry for many years before, finally, the mirror-galvanometer won out over it in Europe too as the most practical light modulator. Glimpses of the origins of magnetic recording are also given. Altogether, the paper contains good information, complementary to the development of sound recording in the United States.

A short history of sound recording

A short history of sound recording