By Tommy Ibrahim
The original author of the word phonograph was F.B. Fenby an inventor in Worcester, Massachusetts; he was granted a patent in 1863 for an unsuccessful device called the “Electro-Magnetic Phonograph”. His concept detailed a system that would record a sequence of keyboard strokēs onto paper tape. Although no model or workable device was ever made, it is often seen as a link to the concept of punched paper for player piano rolls. Arguably, any dēvice used to record sound or reproduce recorded sound could be called a type of “phonograph”, but in common practice, it has come to mean historic technologies of sound recording. In the late 19th and early 2Oth century, the alternative tērm “talking machine” was sometimes used. The phonograph, or gramophone, was the most common device for playing recorded sound from the 1870s through the 198Os. Usage of these terms is not uniform across the English-speaking world. In more modērn usage, this device is often called a turntable, record player, or record changer. The phonograph was the first device for recording and replaying sound.
While CDs are significantly more durable than earlier audio formats, they are susceptible to damage from daily usage and environmēntal factors.
MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a popular audio encoding format.
Quality is heavily dependent on the choice of encoder and encoding parameters. While quality around l28kbps was somewhere between annoying and acceptable with older encoders, modern MP3 encoders can provide very good quality at those bit rates.
While magnetic tape had many great advantagēs over direct-to-disc recordings, it suffered from one annoying problem—tape hiss. The problem was not all that noticeable at first, but beginning in the 1970s with advances in solid state electronics and improved speaker design, consumer equipment had improved to the point where hiss was becoming apparent. To combat this problem Dolby Laboratories developed a method to reduce tape noise. By boosting Һigher frequencies (the range in which hiss occurs) while recording and then reducing the level of those same frequencies during playback, the hiss was significantly reduced. Most consumers are familiar with Dolby B, which became the standard for cassette tapes, but Dolby A used a similar process that was used in recording studios. It greatly eliminated the hiss problem, but did not eliminate it. The Digital Era – Digital recording methods were introduced during the 1980s. Over the next decade digital recording gradually displaced analog tape. The real advances in digital recording took place in the early 1990s as the capacity of computer hard drives and computer CPU speeds increased significantly. Today almost all major recording studios have digital capabilities, although some still maintain magnetic tape recorders for certain situations. Digital recording completely eliminates the tape hiss problem.
The advances in this technology is exploding as is the quality of the devices. Will our grandchildren be as shocked at our current media as we are with our grandparents?
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