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The history of sound recording from its inception to the present day. Audio recording history

The history of sound recording from its inception to the present day. Audio recording history

02.03.2019

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Attempts to create devices that reproduce sounds were made back in Ancient Greece. In IV-II centuries BC. e. there existed theaters of self-moving figures - androids. The movements of some of them were accompanied by mechanically extracted sounds that formed melody.

During the Renaissance, a number of various mechanical musical instruments were created that reproduce this or that melody at the right time: barrel organ, music boxes, boxes, snuff boxes.

In the Middle Ages, chimes were created - tower or large room clocks with musical mechanism, publishing a battle in a certain melodic sequence of tones or performing small pieces of music. These are the Kremlin chimes and Big Ben in London.

mechanical sound recording

In 1877, the American Thomas Alva Edison invented the phonograph, the first recording device to record the sound of the human voice. For mechanical recording and reproduction of sound, Edison used rollers covered with tin foil (Fig. 5.2). Such backing rolls were hollow cylinders about 5 cm in diameter and 12 cm long.

In the first phonograph, a metal roller was rotated by a crank, moving axially with each revolution due to a screw thread on the drive shaft. Tin foil (staniol) was applied to the roller. It was touched by a steel needle connected to a parchment membrane. A metal cone horn was attached to the membrane. When recording and playing sound, the roller had to be rotated manually at a speed of 1 revolution per minute. When the roller rotated in the absence of sound, the needle extruded a spiral groove (or groove) of constant depth on the foil. When the membrane vibrated, the needle was pressed into the tin in accordance with the perceived sound, creating a groove of variable depth. So the method of "deep recording" was invented.

Berliner first demonstrated the prototype of the record matrix at the Franklin Institute. It was a zinc circle with an engraved phonogram. The inventor covered the zinc disk with wax paste, recorded sound on it in the form of sound grooves, and then etched it with acid. The result was a metal copy of the recording. Later, a layer of copper was added to the wax-coated disc by electroplating. Such a copper "cast" keeps the sound grooves convex. Copies are made from this electroplating disc - positive and negative. Negative copies are matrices from which up to 600 records can be printed. The record obtained in this way had a higher volume and better quality. Berliner demonstrated such records in 1888, and this year can be considered the beginning of the era of recordings.

The first records were single-sided. In 1903, a 12-inch double-sided disc was released for the first time. It could be "played" in a gramophone using a mechanical pickup - a needle and a membrane.

magnetic sound recording

In 1898, the Danish engineer Voldemar Paulsen (1869-1942) invented an apparatus for magnetically recording sound on steel wire. He called it "telegraph". However, the disadvantage of using wire as a carrier was the problem of connecting its individual pieces. It was impossible to tie them with a knot, since it did not pass through the magnetic head. In addition, steel wire is easily tangled, and a thin steel tape cuts hands. In general, it was not suitable for operation.

Later, Paulsen invented a method of magnetic recording on a rotating steel disk, where information was recorded in a spiral by a moving magnetic head. Here it is, the prototype of a floppy disk and a hard disk (hard drive), which are so widely used in modern computers! In addition, Paulsen proposed and even implemented the first answering machine with the help of his telegraph.

In 1927, F. Pfleimer developed a magnetic tape manufacturing technology. Magnetic tape is suitable for repeated sound recording. The number of such records is practically unlimited. It is determined only by the mechanical strength of the new information carrier - magnetic tape. The first tape recorders were reel-to-reel. Later, cassette tape recorders replaced reel-to-reel tape recorders. The first such device was developed by Philips in 1961-1963.

All mechanical cassette recorders contain more than 100 parts, some of which are movable. The recording head and electrical contacts wear out over several years. The hinged lid also breaks easily. Cassette recorders use an electric motor to pull the tape past the record heads.

Digital voice recorders differ from mechanical voice recorders by the complete absence of moving parts. They use solid-state flash memory as a carrier instead of magnetic tape.

Digital voice recorders convert an audio signal (such as a voice) into a digital code and record it on a memory chip. The operation of such a recorder is controlled by a microprocessor. The absence of a tape drive, recording and erasing heads greatly simplifies the design of digital voice recorders and makes it more reliable. For ease of use, they are equipped with a liquid crystal display. The main advantages of digital voice recorders are the almost instantaneous search for the desired recording and the ability to transfer the recording to a personal computer, in which you can not only store these recordings, but also edit them, re-record without the help of a second voice recorder, etc.

Optical discs

In 1979, Philips and Sony created a completely new storage medium that replaced the record - an optical disc (compact disc - Compact Disk - CD) for recording and playing sound. In 1982, mass production of CDs began at a factory in Germany. A significant contribution to the popularization of the CD was made by Microsoft and Apple Computer.

Compared to mechanical sound recording, it has a number of advantages - a very high recording density and the complete absence of mechanical contact between the carrier and the reader during recording and playback. Using a laser beam, signals are digitally recorded on a rotating optical disc.

As a result of recording, a spiral track is formed on the disc, consisting of depressions and smooth areas. In playback mode, a laser beam focused on a track travels across the surface of a rotating optical disc and reads the recorded information. In this case, the cavities are read as zeros, and the areas that evenly reflect light are read as ones. The digital recording method provides almost complete absence of interference and high sound quality.

It is much better to store sound recordings in digital form on optical discs than in analog form on phonograph records or tape cassettes. First of all, the longevity of records is disproportionately increased. After all, optical discs are practically eternal - they are not afraid of small scratches, the laser beam does not damage them when playing records. So, Sony gives a 50-year warranty on data storage on disks. In addition, CDs do not suffer from the interference typical of mechanical and magnetic recording, so the sound quality of digital optical discs is incommensurably better. In addition, with digital recording, there is the possibility of computer sound processing, which allows, for example, to restore the original sound of old mono recordings, remove noise and distortion from them, and even turn them into stereo.

The digital recording method made it possible to combine text and graphics with sound and moving images on the personal computer. This technology is called "multimedia".

As storage media in such multimedia computers, optical CD-ROMs (Compact Disk Read Only Memory - that is, read-only CD-ROM) are used. Outwardly, they do not differ from audio CDs used in players and music centers. Information in them is also recorded in digital form.

The DVD standard allows for significantly longer playback times and improved quality of video playback compared to existing CD-ROMs and LD Video CDs.

The DVD-ROM and DVD-Video formats appeared in 1996, and later the DVD-audio format was developed to record high quality sound.

Blu-ray Disc, BD (English blue ray - blue beam and disc - disc; spelling blu instead of blue - intentional) is an optical media format used for high-density recording and storage of digital data, including high-definition video. The Blu-ray standard was jointly developed by the BDA consortium. The first prototype of the new carrier was presented in October 2000. The modern version was presented at the international exhibition of consumer electronics Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which was held in January 2006. The commercial launch of the Blu-ray format took place in the spring of 2006.

Blu-ray (lit. "blue beam") gets its name from the use of a short wavelength (405 nm) "blue" (technically blue-violet) laser for recording and reading. The letter "e" was deliberately omitted from the word "blue" in order to be able to register a trademark, since the expression "blue ray" is often used and cannot be registered as a trademark.

From the format's inception in 2006 until early 2008, Blu-ray had a serious competitor - the alternative HD DVD format. Within two years, many of the major film studios that originally supported HD DVD gradually switched to Blu-ray. Warner Brothers, the last company to release in both formats, phased out HD DVD in January 2008. On February 19 of the same year, Toshiba, the creator of the format, stopped developing HD DVD. This event marked the end of the so-called second "format war"

Compression is used to process digital audio. This helps when the vocalist has problems with hissing sounds, and changing the type of microphone and its location does not correct the situation. An equalizer is used at almost any stage of any sound processing process - from recording a live concert to mixing a multi-channel studio recording. Basically, equalizers are used to correct an audio signal that does not meet certain requirements.

The history of sound recording from the beginning to the present day

From cylinder to plate

It is curious that the first devices for recording and reproducing sound were similar to the mechanisms of music boxes. Both in those and in others, a roller (cylinder) was used, and then a disk, which, rotating, made sound reproduction possible.

However, it all started not even with music boxes, but with ... European bell chimes. Here, namely in the Flandrian city of Melechen, from the 14th century they learned to cast chromatically tuned bells. Collected together, they were connected by a wire transmission to an organ-like keyboard, and such a musical construction was called a carillon. By the way, in French Melechen sounds like Malin - that's where the expression "raspberry ringing" came from.

Human thought did not stand still, and very soon carillons began to be equipped with the already mentioned cylinders, on the surface of which pins were located in a certain order. These pins caught either the hammers that hit the bells, or the tongues of the bells. IN late XVIII In the 1800s, the ridged roller began to be used in more miniature devices - music boxes, where chromatically tuned combs with metal plates began to be used instead of bells. In the 19th century, Switzerland became the center for the production of clockwork music boxes. And in 1870, a German inventor decided to use a disk instead of a roller, marking the beginning of the wide popularity of caskets with interchangeable disks.

Music box with removable disk.

However, the most diverse mechanical musical mechanisms (caskets, snuff boxes, clocks, orchestrions, etc.) were not able to give mankind the main thing - to make it possible to reproduce the human voice. The best minds of the Old and New Worlds took on this task in the second half of the 19th century, and the American Thomas Alva Edison won this correspondence race.

However, one cannot help but recall the Frenchman Charles Cros, who was also a talented and multi-talented person. He dealt (and not without success) with literature, the automatic telegraph, the problems of color photography, and even "possible connections with the planets." On April 30, 1877, Cros submitted to the French Academy of Sciences a description of an apparatus for recording and reproducing speech - the "palephone". The Frenchman proposed to use not only a "roller", but also a "disc with a spiral record". Only Cro did not find sponsors for his invention.

Events on the other side of the ocean developed quite differently. Edison himself described the moment when a truly brilliant thought came to him: “Once, when I was still working on improving the telephone, I somehow sang over the diaphragm of the telephone, to which a steel needle was soldered. Due to the vibration of the record, the needle pricked my finger, and it got me thinking: If you could record these vibrations of the needle, and then run the needle over the record again, why wouldn't the record speak?"

As usual, Edison did not hesitate, but set about creating an unprecedented device. In the same 1877 year that Charles Cros described his "palephone," Edison gave his mechanic, John Crusey, a drawing of a fairly simple device, which he estimated to assemble at $18. However, the assembled apparatus became the world's first "talking machine" - Edison loudly sang a popular English children's song into the horn: "Marie had a little lamb" ("Marie had a little lamb"), and the device reproduced "heard", albeit with great interference .

Phonograph.

The principle of operation of the phonograph, as Edison dubbed his brainchild, was based on the transmission of sound vibrations of the voice to the surface of a rotating cylinder covered with tin foil. The vibrations were applied with the tip of a steel needle, one end of which was connected to a steel membrane that captured sounds. The cylinder had to be rotated by hand at a frequency of one revolution per second.

Work on the phonograph began on July 18, 1877, as recorded in Edison's laboratory record book. On December 24, a patent application was filed, and on February 19, 1878, Edison received a patent number 200521.

To say that the phonograph created an international sensation would be an understatement. However, the design of the phonograph did not allow for high-quality reproduction, although Edison himself made improvements to the device for many years after the creation of the first phonograph. Perhaps Edison should have focused on creating (or modernizing) other sound recording devices, because the phonograph (like the graphophone developed by Bell (Bell) and Taynter (Taynter) was a dead end branch in the development of the sound recording / playback industry. However, Edison loved his phonograph too much for its uniqueness, because we owe the presence of more convenient audio media in our lives to an American inventor of German origin - Emile Berliner, who immensely expanded the horizons of sound recording.Of course, Berliner did not invent the modern CD, but it was he who received a patent for the invention of the gramophone in 1887 , which used records as an audio medium.

Gramophone.

Berliner moved to the US in 1870, where, incidentally, he got a job with Alexander Bell's telephone company and patented the carbon microphone. Well acquainted with the device of both the phonograph and the graphophone, he nonetheless refers to the idea of using the disk, which, as we already know, was "successfully" buried by the French Academy of Sciences. In the apparatus called the gramophone, Berliner used a glass disc covered with soot, on which transverse recording was carried out. On September 26, 1887, Berliner received a patent for the gramophone, and on May 16 of the following year he demonstrated the device at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

Very soon, Berliner abandons the soot disc and resorts to the acid etching method. The disc was now taken from zinc, covered with a thin layer of wax. The record was scratched with an iridium point, after which the disc was etched in 25% chromic acid. In less than half an hour, grooves with a depth of about 0.1 mm appeared, then the disk was washed from acid and used for its intended purpose.

Berliner's merit also consisted in the fact that he realized the need to copy the recording from the original (matrix). The ability to replicate audio recordings is the cornerstone of the entire modern recording industry. In this direction, Berliner worked very hard. First, in 1888, he created the first phonograph record-copy from Hiat celluloid, which is now in National Library Washington. But celluloid discs were poorly stored and wore out quickly, so Berliner tries other materials, in particular glass, Bakelite and ebonite. In 1896, Berliner uses a mixture of shellac, spar and soot in the plate. The shellac mass and the process of pressing phonograph records for Berliner were developed by Louis Rosenthal from Frankfurt. This time, the quality satisfied the inventor, and a similar mass of shellac was used to create gramophone records until 1946.

Surprisingly, shellac was a hardened resin of organic origin, in the formation of which insects of the lac bug family take part. But even the shellac mass was far from perfect: gramophone records from it turned out to be heavy, fragile and thick.

At the same time, Berliner worked hard to improve gramophones, realizing that it was necessary to increase the number of record lovers and, thereby, the market. In 1897, Berliner and Eldridge Jonson opened the world's first record and gramophone factory, the Victor Talking Machine Co., in the United States. Then, in the UK, Berliner creates the company "E. Berliner" s Gramophone Co. "By the beginning of 1902, the enterprising inventor's companies sold over four million records!

Gramophone.

Progress did not bypass Russia either - in 1902, the first eight recordings of the legendary Russian singer Fyodor Chaliapin were made using Berliner equipment.

However, the gramophone did not escape radical modernization - in 1907, an employee of the French company "Pate" Guillon Kemmler (Kemmler) decided to place a bulky horn inside the gramophone. The new devices began to be called "gramophones" (after the name of the manufacturer) and significantly facilitated their carrying. Subsequently (starting from the 50s of the twentieth century), gramophones were replaced by more advanced electric players, which played light and practical vinyl discs.

Vinyl records were made from a polymeric material called vinylite (in the USSR, from polyvinylchloride). The playback speed was reduced from 78 to 33 1/3 rpm, and the duration of the sound - up to half an hour for one side. This standard has become the most popular, although records of other formats, in particular, with a rotation speed of 45 revolutions per minute (the so-called forty-five), were widely used.

Magnetic recording as an alternative
The possibility of converting acoustic vibrations into electromagnetic ones was proven by Oberlin Smith, who outlined the principle of magnetic recording on steel wire in 1888. Thomas Edison was also involved here, for Smith's experiments with magnetic recording were inspired by a visit to Edison's famous laboratory.

But it was not until 1896 that the Danish engineer Valdemar Poulsen managed to create a workable device called the telegraph. Steel wire served as a carrier. A patent for the telegraph phone was issued to Poulsen in 1898.

Telegraph.

The fundamental principle of analog sound recording by magnetizing the medium has remained unchanged since then. A signal from the amplifier is applied to the recording head, along which the carrier passes at a constant speed (later it became a more convenient tape), as a result, the carrier is magnetized in accordance with the audio signal. During playback, the carrier passes along the reproducing head, inducing a weak electrical signal in it, which, amplified, enters the speaker.

Magnetic film was patented in Germany by Fritz Pfleumer in the mid-1920s. At first, the tape was made on a paper basis, and later on a polymer one. In the mid-30s of the twentieth century, the German company BASF launched the serial production of a tape recorder, created from carbonyl iron powder or from magnetite on a diacetate basis.

Around the same time, AEG launched a studio tape recorder for radio broadcasting. The device was called "tape recorder", in Russian it was transformed into a "tape recorder".

The principle of "high-frequency bias" (when a high-frequency component is added to the recorded signal) was proposed in 1940 by German engineers Braunmull and Weber - this gave a significant improvement in sound quality.

Reel-to-reel tape recorders have been used since the 1930s. In the late 50s, cartridges appeared, but nevertheless, compact and convenient cassette recorders gained the greatest popularity. The first "cassette" was created by the Dutch company Philips in 1961. The peak of the development of tape recorders should be considered the appearance of Sony players of the brand "Walkman" in 1979. These small, non-recordable devices made a splash because now you could listen to your favorite music on the go, playing sports, and so on. In addition, the person with the player did not interfere with others, because he listened to audio recordings in headphones. Later, players with the ability to record appeared.

Digital Invasion
Rapid development in the late 70s of the twentieth century computer technology led to the emergence of the possibility of storing and reading any information in digital form from the appropriate media. And here the development of digital audio recording has gone in two ways. At first, the compact disc appeared and received the widest distribution. Later, with the advent of capacious hard drives, player programs that played compressed audio recordings went to the masses. As a result, the development of flash technologies at the beginning of the 21st century led to the fact that compact discs (meaning the Audio-CD format) were under the threat of oblivion, as happened with records and cassettes.

A rapidly outdated Audio-CD.

However, let's go back to 1979, when Philips and Sony "figured out" the production of laser discs for two. Sony, by the way, introduced its signal encoding method - PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) which was used in digital tape recorders. The latter were abbreviated DAT (Digital Audio Tape) and were used for professional studio recording. Mass production of CDs started in 1982 in Germany.

Gradually, optical discs are no longer exclusively carriers of audio recordings. CD-ROM appears, and then CD-R and CD-RW, where it was already possible to store any digital information. On CD-R, it could be written once, and on CD-RW, it could be written and rewritten many times using the appropriate drives.

Information on a CD is recorded as a spiral track of "pits" (recesses) extruded on a polycarbonate substrate. Reading / writing data is carried out using a laser beam.

Information compression algorithms have helped to significantly reduce the size of digital audio files without much loss to human auditory perception. The MP3 format has become the most widespread, and now all compact digital music players are called MP3 players, although they certainly support other formats, in particular, also quite popular WMA and OGG.

The MP3 format (short for English MPEG-1/2/2.5 Layer 3) is also supported by any modern models of music centers and DVD players. It uses a lossy compression algorithm that is insignificant for human ear perception. An MP3 file with an average bitrate of 128 kbps is about 1/10 the size of an original Audio-CD file.

The MP3 format was developed by the Fraunhofer Institute Working Group led by Karlheinz Brandenburg in collaboration with AT&T Bell Labs and Thomson.

MP3 is based on the experimental codec ASPEC (Adaptive Spectral Perceptual Entropy Coding). L3Enc was the first MP3 encoder (released in the summer of 1994) and the first software MP3 player was Winplay3 (1995).

And yet they turn...

MP3 player... one of many.
The ability to download to a computer or player is very a large number digital tracks, their quick sorting, deletion and re-recording have made compressed digital music a mass phenomenon, which even the giants of the sound industry, who have been suffering losses from falling demand for Audio-CDs, cannot fight for many years. And yet, despite the fact that reels and cassettes have already become a thing of the past, the future of optical discs as media looks extremely promising. Yes, technologies have changed radically, but today, just like more than a hundred years ago, discs are spinning in order to please people with the next musical creation. The principle of spiral recording works perfectly to this day.

1. Music boxes, barrel-organs, polyphons, orchestras (17th century)

During the Renaissance, a number of various mechanical musical instruments were created that reproduce this or that melody at the right time: barrel organ, music boxes, boxes, snuff boxes.

Musical hurdy-gurdy works as follows. Sounds are created using steel thin plates of various lengths and thicknesses, placed in an acoustic box in a sequence of harmonic scales. To extract sound from them, a special drum with protruding pins is used, the location of which on the surface of the drum corresponds to the intended melody. With uniform rotation of the drum, the pins touch the plates in a given sequence. By rearranging the pins in advance to other places, you can change the melodies. The organ grinder himself activates the hurdy-gurdy by turning the handle.

Music boxes implement a different principle. Here, a metal disk is used to pre-record the melody, on which a deep spiral groove is applied. In certain places of the groove, dotted recesses are made - pits, the location of which corresponds to the melody. When the disk, driven by a clock spring mechanism, rotates, a special metal needle slides along the groove and "reads" the sequence of applied dots. The needle is attached to a membrane that makes a sound each time the needle enters the groove.

In the Middle Ages, chimes were created - a tower or large room clock with a musical mechanism that strikes in a certain melodic sequence of tones or performs small pieces of music.

Musical mechanical instruments are just automatic machines that reproduce artificially created sounds. The task of preserving the sounds of living life for a long time was solved much later.

2. Phonograph (19th century, 1877)

In 1877, the American Thomas Alva Edison invented the phonograph, the first recording device to record the sound of the human voice. For mechanical recording and reproduction of sound, Edison used rollers covered with tin foil. Such backing rolls were hollow cylinders about 5 cm in diameter and 12 cm long.

At the first test of his apparatus, Edison pulled the foil tightly over the cylinder, brought the needle to the surface of the cylinder, carefully began to rotate the handle and sang the first stanza of the children's song "Mary had a sheep" into the mouthpiece. Then he took the needle away, returned the cylinder to its original position with the handle, put the needle into the drawn groove and again began to rotate the cylinder. And from the mouthpiece, a children's song sounded softly, but clearly.

In 1885, the American inventor Charles Tainter (1854-1940) developed the graphophone—a foot-operated phonograph (like a foot-operated sewing machine)—and replaced the tin roll sheets with wax. Edison bought Tainter's patent, and instead of foil rolls, removable wax rolls were used for recording. The pitch of the sound groove was about 3 mm, so the recording time per roll was very short.

Edison used the same apparatus, the phonograph, to record and reproduce sound.

3. Gramophone (19th century, 1887)

The American inventor of German origin Emil Berliner replaced Edison's wax roller with a flat disk - a gramophone record and developed a technology for its mass production using a matrix. Berliner demonstrated such records in 1888, and this year can be considered the beginning of the era of recordings. A little later, pressing of gramophone records was developed using a steel printed matrix made of rubber and ebonite, and later from a composite mass based on shellac, a substance produced by tropical insects. The plates became better and cheaper, but their main drawback was their low mechanical strength. Shellac records were produced until the middle of the 20th century.

Until 1896 the disk had to be rotated by hand, and this was the main obstacle to the wide distribution of gramophones. Emil Berliner announced a competition for a spring engine - inexpensive, technologically advanced, reliable and powerful. And such an engine was designed by mechanic Eldridge Johnson, who came to Berliner's company. From 1896 to 1900 about 25,000 of these engines were produced. Only then did Berliner's gramophone become widespread.

The first records were single-sided. In 1903, a 12-inch double-sided disc was released for the first time. It could be "played" in a gramophone using a mechanical pickup - a needle and a membrane. Sound amplification was achieved using a bulky bell. Later, a portable gramophone was developed: a gramophone with a bell hidden in the case. For engineering reasons, the optimal frequency for the human ear was generated by a pipe more than 6 meters long. The masters were looking for a compromise: the trumpet was folded into a snail, following the principle of a French horn. The diameter of the bell sometimes reached one and a half meters or more. They were made of tin-plated nickel-plated brass and other metals, exotic options were made of glass. Later, it was universally recognized that the best sound comes from wood: four-layer oak horns became the most popular. The shape varied from narrow and wide cone-shaped funnels to bent pipes with sockets in the form of a tulip and a bell, rotating around its axis.

In the cabinets of His Master's Voice, the horn was built in. By opening and closing the upper doors, behind which the "column" was hidden, it was possible to adjust the sound, and there were shelves for records in the lower part.

4. Gramophone (20th century, 1907)

The gramophone (from the name of the French company "Pathe") - a portable version of the gramophone - had the form of a portable suitcase. Unlike a gramophone, a gramophone has a small mouthpiece and is built into the case.

The main disadvantages of gramophone records were their fragility, poor quality sound and a short playing time - only 3-5 minutes (at a speed of 78 rpm). In the pre-war years, stores even accepted "battle" records for recycling. Gramophone needles had to be changed frequently. The plate was rotated with the help of a spring motor, which had to be "started" with a special handle. However, due to its modest size and weight, simplicity of design and independence from the electrical network, the gramophone has become very widespread among music lovers.

5. Radiols or electrophones (20th century, 1925)

An electrophone is a device for reproducing sound from a gramophone record. Cumbersome at home official name"electrophone" was usually replaced by a neutral "player". Unlike the gramophone, in the electrophone (as well as the radiol - a combination of a player and a radio receiver), the mechanical vibrations of the pickup needle were converted into electrical vibrations, amplified by an audio frequency amplifier and then converted into sound by an electro-acoustic system.

Fragile gramophone records were replaced in 1948-1952 by the so-called "long-playing" ones - more durable, almost unbreakable and providing a much longer playing time. This was achieved by narrowing and bringing together sound tracks, as well as by reducing the number of revolutions from 78 to 45, and more often to 33 1/3 revolutions per minute. The quality of sound reproduction during playback of such records has increased significantly. In addition, since 1958, they began to produce stereophonic records that create the effect of surround sound. The turntable stylus has also become significantly more durable. They began to be made from hard materials, and they completely replaced the short-lived gramophone needles. Recording of gramophone records was carried out only in special recording studios.

Electrophones are still used both at home and in electronic music as part of other instruments. However, at home, their distribution has practically reduced to zero, as well as the sale of gramophone records, due to the fact that they have been almost completely replaced by universal laser digital players. At the present time, the electrophone at home - rather a tribute amateurish so-called. "analogue" sound, which, according to some lovers of high-quality music playback, is superior to the sound of digital media (more "soft" and juicy), which is rather only the individual "taste" of a certain person in relation to high-quality sound.

7. CD player (player) (20th century, mid-1980s)

Bibliography

How was the phonograph invented?//Gramophone. 1908. No. 4. pp. 10-11.

Zhelezny A.I. Our friend is a gramophone record: Notes of a collector. - K: Music. Ukraine. 1989. 279 p.

Lapirov-Scoblo M. Edison. - M: Young Guard. 1960. 255 p.

Belkind L.A. Thomas Alva Edison. - M: Science. 1964. 327 p.

Telegraph // Electrician's Newspaper. 1889. No. 32. pp. 520-522.

Pestrikov V. M. Radio? Where? // Radio hobby. 1998. No. 1. pp. 2-3..

Pestrikov V. M. The great invention of Waldemar Paulsen // Radio hobby. 1998. No. 6. pp. 2-3

Before the advent of portable sources of sound reproduction, digital signal and music as we imagine it today, sound recording has been a long and exciting development history. Today we will talk about how in just 100 s small years man turned the understanding of sound recording: from bulky archaic phonographs to modern ultra-compact players.

Mechanical recording of a melody

Human nature is such that he simply cannot imagine life without sounds, harmony and musical instruments. For several millennia, musicians have honed their skills in playing the lyre, jew's harp, lute or cistre. But in order to delight the ears of high-ranking gentlemen, the presence of a troupe of musicians was always required. So there was a need to record music with the possibility of its further playback without human intervention.

9th century rightfully considered the century of discovery era of mechanical recording. IN 875 brothers Banu Musa reveal their new invention to the world - "water organ". Its principle of operation was extremely simple: a uniformly rotating mechanical roller with cleverly placed protrusions hit vessels with different amounts of water (which affects the pitch) and thus making filled tubes sound. A few years later, the brothers presented the first automatic flute, which is also based on the principle of "water body".

Until the 19th century, it was the inventions of the Banu Musa brothers that remained the only available method of programmable sound recording. Showcased in XIII century mechanical carillon, using the same principle as the Banu Musa organ, but with bells installed, was very soon forgotten.

Since the 15th century, the Renaissance has been covered by fashion for mechanical musical instruments. Opens the parade of musical instruments with the principle of the Musa brothers hurdy-gurdy. IN 1598 the first musical clock , in the middle 16th century – caskets. The first half of the 19th century continues the trend in the development of mechanical musical instruments: boxes, snuffboxes- all these devices had a very limited set of melodies and could reproduce the motive previously "saved" by the master. Until 1857, no one could record a human voice or the sound of an acoustic instrument with the possibility of its further reproduction.

The era of mechanical recording

While the metallic sounds of music boxes, boxes and snuff boxes continued to be heard from the windows and houses of the inhabitants of France, Edward Leon Scott de Martinville continued to work on first sound recording device. March 25, 1857 The French government registers a patent called "phonautograph".

Principle of operation phonautograph consisted in recording a sound wave by capturing vibrations through a special acoustic horn, at the end of which there was a needle. Under the influence of sound, the needle began to vibrate, drawing an intermittent wave on a rotating glass roller, the surface of which was covered with either paper or soot. Alas, the invention of Edward Scott could not reproduce the recorded fragment. Seven years ago, a 10-second excerpt was found in a Paris archive folk song "Moonlight" by the inventor himself April 9, 1860.

17 years later, in 1877"father of the incandescent lamp" Thomas Edison is finishing work on a completely new sound recording device - phonograph, which a year later he will patent in the appropriate department of the United States. The principle of operation of the phonograph was reminiscent of Scott's phonoautograph: a wax-covered roller acted as a sound carrier, the recording on which was carried out using a needle connected to the membrane - the progenitor of the microphone. Capturing sound through a special horn, the membrane actuated a needle, which left grooves on the wax roller.

For the first time, the recorded sound could be played back using the same device on which the recording itself was made. Alas, mechanical energy was not enough to obtain the nominal volume level.

Edison's phonograph managed to turn the then world upside down: hundreds of inventors began to experiment using various materials to cover the carrier cylinder, and in 1906 The first public audition concert took place. Edison's phonograph was applauded by a packed house. IN 1912 the world saw disc phonograph, in which, instead of the usual wax roller, a disk was used, which greatly simplified the design.

The appearance of the disk phonograph, although it was of public interest, from the point of view of the evolution of sound recording practical application did not find it. WITH 1888 Emil Berliner began to actively develop his own vision of sound recording using his own device - gramophone.

As an alternative to the wax drum, Berliner preferred a more durable celluloid. In 1887, records were made from spar, soot and shellac. The principle of recording remained the same: a horn, sound, vibrations of the needle and uniform rotation of the disk-plate.

Experiments with the speeds of rotation of the recorded disc made it possible to increase the recording time of one side of the plate. up to 2-2.5 minutes at a rotation speed of 78 revolutions in a minute. Recorded discs-plates were placed in cardboard cases (less often leather), which is why they later received the name albums- Outwardly, they very much resembled photo albums with the sights of cities that are sold everywhere in Europe.

The bulky gramophone was replaced by an improved and refined in 1907 Guillon Kemmler device - gramophone.

A small horn built into the case, the ability to place the entire device in one compact suitcase led to the rapid popularization of the gramophone. In the 40s, a compact version of the device was released - mini gramophone, which gained particular popularity among the soldiers.

Era of electromechanical recording

Scientific and technological progress did not stand still, and with the advent of electricity, the evolution of sound recording began its rapid development. IN 1925 begins the era of sound recording using microphone, an electric motor (instead of a spring mechanism) for rotating the plate and, first piezoelectric, and then more advanced magnetic pickup.

The arsenal of devices that allow both sound recording and its further reproduction is replenished with a modified version of the gramophone - electrophone. The appearance of an amplifier allows you to bring the sound recording to new level: electro-acoustic systems get loudspeakers, and the need for forcing sound through a horn is a thing of the past. All physical efforts of a person are now performed by electrical energy.

The question of the duration of sound recording was first solved by the Soviet inventor Alexander Shorin, which in 1930 proposed to use as operational recording a film passing through a writing electric unit at a constant speed. The device was named shorinophone, but the quality of the recording remained only suitable for further voice reproduction. But on a 20 meter film it was now possible to place 1 hour recording.

The last echo of electromechanical recording was the so-called "talking paper" proposed in 1931 Soviet engineer Skvortsov. Sound vibrations were recorded on plain paper with a black ink pen. Such papers could be easily copied and transferred.

To reproduce the recorded, a powerful lamp and a photocell were used. Alas, until the release of the serial version of the device capable of playing " talking paper It took 13 years. At this time, the 40s of the last century were already conquered by a new way of sound recording - magnetic.

The era of magnetic recording

History of development magnetic sound recording almost all the time it went parallel to the mechanical methods of recording, but remained in the shadows until 1932. Also in late XIX century, inspired by the invention of Edison, an American engineer Oberlin Smith engaged in the study of sound recording. IN 1888 An article is published on the use of the phenomenon of magnetism in sound recording. Danish engineer Valdemar Poulsen, after ten years of experimentation in 1898 receives a patent for the use steel wire as sound carrier.

This is how the first sound recording device appeared, which was based on the principle of magnetism - telegraph. IN 1924 inventor Kurt Stille improves the brainchild of Poulsen and creates first voice recorder based magnetic tape.

1928, German engineer Fritz Pfleimer receives a patent for the use of magnetic powder for the purpose of sputtering on paper and further use for magnetic recording. Alas, after 8 years, the German National Court recognizes Pflamer's patent as a plagiarism on the principles of sound recording, set out back in 1898 by Waldemar Poulsen. The company intervenes in the further evolution of magnetic recording AEG, which released mid 1932 device Tapephone-K1.

Applying as iron oxide film coating, company BASF makes a real revolution in the world of sound recording. Using AC bias, engineers get a whole new sound quality: reduced up to 60 dB signal-to-noise ratio and overcoming the upper level of sound frequency at 10 kHz.

From 1930 until 1970, the world market is represented by reel-to-reel tape recorders in a variety of form factors and with a variety of capabilities. Magnetic tape opens creative doors for thousands of producers, engineers and composers who have the opportunity to experiment with sound recording not on an industrial scale, but right in their own apartment.

Such experiments were further facilitated by the appearance in the mid-1950s of multitrack tape recorders. It became possible to record several sound sources at once on one magnetic tape. In 1963 comes out 16 track tape recorder, in the 74th - 24 track, and after 8 years, Sony offers an improved DASH-format digital recording scheme on a 24-track tape recorder.

The appearance of the familiar and familiar from childhood cassette associated with registered in 1952 corresponding patent, and already in 1963 company Philips represents the first compact cassette, which in just a few years will become the main mass audio playback format.

A year later, mass production of compact cassettes is launched in Hannover. In 1965, Philips initiates music cassette production, and in September 1966, the first echoes of the company's two-year industrial experiments go on sale in the United States. The unreliability of the design and the difficulties that arose with the recording of music force manufacturers to further search for a reference storage medium. And the search ended successfully for the company Advent Corporation, which presented in 1971 cassette based magnetic tape, in the production of which chromium oxide was used.

The era of laser-optical sound recording

The ideas of sound recording, laid down at the end of the 19th century by Thomas Edison, in the second half of the 20th century led to the use of laser beam. Optical sound recording is based on the principle of the formation of spiral tracks on a CD, consisting of smooth sections and pits. The laser era made it possible to imagine the sound wave in complex combination zeros (smooth sections) and ones (pits).

IN March 1979 company Philips demonstrates the first CD prototype, and a week later the Dutch concern enters into an agreement with a Japanese company Sony, having approved a new standard audio CDs. IN 1982 Philips presents first CD player, which surpassed all previously presented media in terms of playback quality.

First album, recorded on a new digital medium, has become a legendary "The Visitors" groups ABBA. IN 1984 company Sony releases first portable CD player – Sony Discman D-50 at a price in $350 .

CDs will reach the USSR only 7 years after the adoption of the format. In 1989, on the shelves of Soviet stores will appear "Stichira for the millennium of the Baptism of Rus'" by Rodion Shchedrin, and from under the floor it was possible to get the disk of the collective Roxette, issued in a circulation of only 180 copies.

The further development of the era of optical CDs will lead to the appearance in 1998 of the standard DVD Audio, entering the audio market with a different number of audio channels (from mono to five channels). Since '98 Philips and Sony have been promoting an alternative CD format - Super Audio CD. The dual-channel drive allowed storage of up to 74 minutes sound in both stereo and multi-channel formats. A capacity of 74 minutes has been determined opera singer, conductor and composer Noria Oga, who at that time also held the position of vice president of the corporation Sony. Noriya Oga said that one CD should contain 9 Symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven. No sooner said than done.

In parallel with the development of CDs, handicraft production - copying media - also developed steadily. Record companies first thought about the need for digital data protection using encryption and watermarks.

The era of magneto-optical recording

Despite the versatility and ease of use of CDs, this media has an impressive list of disadvantages. One of the main ones is their excessive fragility and the need for careful handling. The recording time of CD-media is also significantly limited and the industry began to look for an alternative.

Appearance on the market magneto-optical minidisk and remained unnoticed by ordinary music lovers. MiniDisk developed by the company Sony also in 1992, and remained the property of sound engineers, performers and people directly connected with the scene.

When recording a minidisk, a magneto-optical head and a laser beam are used, cutting through areas with a magneto-optical layer at high temperature. At the same time, with the help of an electromagnetic pulse, the magnetization of the layer changes with the manifestation of the same pits (holes) as when recording a CD. The main advantage of a minidisc over a traditional CD is its improved security and longer life span.

In 1992, Sony introduced the first minidisc media format player. The player model (however, like the format itself) has gained particular popularity in Japan, but outside the country as the firstborn - the player Sony MZ1, and its improved descendants, was not accepted.

One way or another, combining playing sports and listening to a CD or minidisk is rather suitable exclusively for more stationary use. Even with a portable CD player, it is not possible to imagine active sports in nature. And engineers began to deal with this problem in the early 90s of the last century.

The era of digital audio

IN 1995 The Fraunhofer Institute developed a revolutionary audio compression format - MPEG 1 Audio Layer 3, which received the abbreviated name mp3. The main problem in the early 90s in the field of digital media was the inaccessibility of sufficient disk space to accommodate a digital composition. The average size of the hard drive of the most sophisticated personal computer at that time hardly exceeded several tens of megabytes.

In ten years, the situation has changed dramatically. IN 1999 18 year old Sean Fanning creates a network Napster, which shocks the entire era of show business. It was possible to exchange music, records and other digital content directly through the network.

Two years later, for copyright infringement by the music industry, the service was closed, but the mechanism was launched and the era of digital music continued to develop uncontrollably: hundreds of peer-to-peer networks, the regulation of which became a real headache for the government.

IN 1997 the first software player enters the market winamp developed by the company Nullsoft.

The emergence of the mp3 codec and its further support by CD player manufacturers lead to a gradual decline in CD sales. Choosing between sound quality (which was really felt only by a small percentage of consumers) and the maximum possible number of songs that can be recorded on one CD disc (on average, the difference is about 6-7 times), the listener chose the latter.

The first mp3 player was a miniature MP Man, released by a South Korean company SaeHan in March 1998. MPMan was presented in two versions: with 32 and 64 megabytes of internal memory, the price tag for the model started at $400.

IN 2003 company enters the market Apple, which offered the distribution of legal digital copies of songs through the iTunes Store. The total database of compositions in the online store at the time of the presentation was over 200,000 tracks. Today, this figure has moved beyond the 20 million mark, signing agreements with such leaders in the recording industry as: BMG, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner, Universal and EMI, Apple opened a whole new page in the history of recording, which we continue to create today.

Thanks to Bowers & Wilkins for their help in preparing the material.

Contest

Answers send to marked "History of Sound Recording".
Deadline: 29 March inclusive.
Delivery: all around Russia.
Winner: who will be the first to give a comprehensive answer to the following question:

The progenitor of this device, like the invention we are talking about, went through the entire evolution of sound recording and was repeatedly banned by management structures. He is mentioned in the diaries of the namesake of the protagonist of the film "Inveterate Scammers", who was wanted by the butler. With the advent of this device, the country is also associated, which today is perceived as a guarantor of accuracy and a guarantee of successful investments. Give the exact name of the device and write a few words about its development.

St. Petersburg State University of Film and Television

ABSTRACT

by discipline

" Film and television equipment "

"History and modern development sound recordings"

completed:

student group 7751

Alferov I.V.

Saint Petersburg 2008

Plan

Introduction

background

magnetic sound recording

Optical discs

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

Sound recording is the process of storing air vibrations in the range of 20-20000 Hz (music, speech or other sounds) on any medium using special devices.

Gramophone records, audio cassettes, CDs, mini-discs, DVDs, Flash-cards: Mankind has come up with all sorts of information carriers to leave the memory of oneself - first of all, of one's voice - for centuries! However, the history of sound recording began with a not too pleasant episode: 130 years ago, American engineer Thomas Edison pricked his finger hard:

"Once I was working with a new model of my phone. The mood was just wonderful, and I sang in between times. I didn’t remember what exactly, because at that very moment a needle stuck to my finger the steel plate trembled under the influence of my voice. And then I thought: is it possible to somehow record these oscillations of the needle? For example, on a plate. After all, logically, if after recording the needle is passed along the tracks made earlier, it should reproduce the same sound! " - so the moment of insight was described by Thomas Edison himself, the inventor of the phonograph.

background

Attempts to create devices that reproduce sounds were made in ancient Greece. In the IV-II centuries BC. there existed theaters of self-moving figures - androids. The movements of some of them were accompanied by mechanically extracted sounds that formed melody.

During the Renaissance, a number of various mechanical musical instruments were created that reproduce this or that melody at the right time: barrel organ, music boxes, boxes, snuff boxes.

Musical hurdy-gurdy works as follows. Sounds are created using steel thin plates of various lengths and thicknesses placed in an acoustic box. To extract the sound, a special drum with protruding pins is used, the location of which on the surface of the drum corresponds to the intended melody. With uniform rotation of the drum, the pins touch the plates in a given sequence. By rearranging the pins in advance to other places, you can change the melodies. The organ grinder himself activates the hurdy-gurdy by turning the handle.

Music boxes use a metal disk with a deep spiral groove to pre-record the melody. In certain places of the groove, dotted recesses are made - pits, the location of which corresponds to the melody. When the disk, driven by a clock spring mechanism, rotates, a special metal needle slides along the groove and "reads" the sequence of applied dots. The needle is attached to a membrane that makes a sound each time the needle enters the groove.

In the Middle Ages, chimes were created - a tower or large room clock with a musical mechanism that strikes in a certain melodic sequence of tones or performs small pieces of music. These are the Kremlin chimes and Big Ben in London.

Musical mechanical instruments are just automatic machines that reproduce artificially created sounds. The task of preserving the sounds of living life for a long time was solved much later.

Many centuries before the invention of mechanical sound recording, musical notation appeared - a graphic way of depicting musical works on paper. In ancient times, melodies were recorded in letters, and modern musical notation (with the designation of the pitch of sounds, the duration of tones, tonality and musical lines) began to develop from the 12th century. At the end of the 15th century, music printing was invented, when notes began to be printed from a set, like books.

It was possible to record and then reproduce recorded sounds in the second half of the 19th century after the invention of sound recording.

mechanical sound recording

The first person who expressed the idea of sound recording and sound reproduction was the Frenchman Charles Cros.

Cros was born in 1842 in Fabrezan (France). His family was talented: his brother was a painter and sculptor, his son was a poet. Kro himself was exceptionally gifted. He studied physics, chemistry, philology, medicine. In 1867 he invented the "autographic telegraph". He is also credited with the invention of the telephone and the process of tricolor photography. Kro even dealt with questions of interplanetary communications and wrote a pamphlet on this subject. He is also known as a talented poet and science fiction writer.

Cro was a poor man and had no opportunity to experiment and even pay the patent fee.

sound recording melody instrument instrument

Phonautograph (phonautograph) by Leon Scot 1857 - the first recording apparatus with a membrane

On October 10, 1877, a friend of Cros placed a note in "La semaine du Clerge" detailing Cros's invention. In this description, among other things, it was proposed to call the device "phonograph". This device is described precisely with a roller, and not with a disk, i.e. in the form that shortly thereafter gave his phonograph Edison.

Cros himself sent a letter on April 30, 1877 to the French Academy of Sciences, in which he not only outlined the essence of the phenomenon of sound reproduction, but pointed out the method of reproduction both using a roller and using a disk, which is recorded in a spiral. In fact, this is what we call today the gramophone record, and Kro justly deserves the title of its inventor.

On December 1877, Kro's letter was opened and read out at a meeting of the Academy of Sciences. But there the idea did not receive support, and his name was almost forgotten. Cros died in Paris at the age of 45 in 1887, the year of the practical implementation of the gramophone, which he never saw.

Of the great number of inventions of Thomas Edison, the phonograph is the main one.

Edison's application was made on December 24, 1877, and the patent, contrary to all the rules on the timing for ascertaining novelty and for filing claims by other persons, was issued to him already on February 19, 1878. These dates cannot but be compared with the dates of the announcement of Cros' ideas. The son of Charles Cros, Guy, wrote in 1927, not without a direct allusion, that the magazine "La semaine du Clerge", in which on October 10, 1877 a detailed description of Cros's phonograph was placed, enjoyed considerable distribution and fame in America at that time.

Edison phonograph

However, even 10 years later, when Berliner received a patent for the gramophone, the experts of the American Patent office still did not know about any of Cro's works.

Today, historians believe that Edison came to the invention of the phonograph on his own and that it happened by accident. He wanted to create a transmitter for the telephone in order to increase the range of telephone conversations many times over.

In the Edison phonograph, recording was made along a helical line by pressing a rather thick tin foil wrapped around a copper cylinder, rotated by hand at a speed of about 1 rpm, and the pitch of the screw on the cylinder was about 3 mm. For reproduction, a membrane located on the other side of the cylinder, equipped with a steel tip, served. The membrane itself consisted of vegetable parchment. A horn cone made of cardboard was put on the membrane. Edison made many design changes to the phonograph, but never achieved a clean sound.

Many inventors tried to improve the phonograph. Greatest Success reached Alexander Bell and Charles Tainter, who in 1886 took out a patent for a device they called the graphonon. They proposed to use transverse recording, cutting instead of extrusion, and as a recording medium - wax with the addition of paraffin and other substances. But it was not possible to overcome the shortcomings of the phonograph. It was time to put Cro's idea of the gramophone record into practice.

In June 1887, Emil Berliner received a patent in the United States, and then in England and Germany for a gramophone, which was made in 1888 and demonstrated on May 16 of the same year at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

At first, Berliner applied transverse recording on a roller, as in a phonograph, and then began to record on a disk using the Kro method. On a glass substrate, he applied soot with paraffin. The substrate was placed on the machine in an overturned position, so that the removed chips could fall down without interfering with the recording. After recording, the phonogram was covered with varnish and served to obtain a relief photographic print on the chromium-gelatin layer. Then Berliner began to try chemical processing methods, namely acid etching. Subsequently, he used zinc as a substrate, and wax as a protective layer. At the end of the recording, the zinc was etched in 25% chromic acid. Only the places drawn with a cutter were etched. Berliner used this zinc as the original and received galvanoplastic copies from it.

Berliner made no secret of his familiarity with Cro's work, but said he learned of Cro's ideas three months after he filed his patent application. Berliner's merit is that he organized the production of gramophones.

Gramophone and record

At the beginning of the XX century. many phonograph companies have attempted to record electrically, but the lack of electrical amplifiers has prevented this method from being realized. With the invention of the vacuum tube, this became possible.

In 1918, the "Gaumont Society" took out a patent for "reading phonograms with an electromagnetic player", that is, for an adapter. In 1924, several firms took out a patent for improved conditions for electrical recording. Since 1925, the electric method of recording with microphones has supplanted mechanoacoustic recording through a horn from production.

The first apparatus for reproducing records, created by Berliner in 1888, already contained the basic elements of a horn gramophone. Further work by various authors to improve the design led to the appearance of a model, which in 1902 was released to the public. It had a spring drive and a rigid connection between the horn and the membrane. This model is depicted in a painting by the artist F. Barro, who depicted a dog that recognizes the voice of its owner, transmitted by a gramophone. The company made this picture its trademark, and the name of the record company HMV (His Master's Voice - "His Master's Voice") became the most popular among record lovers for decades.

Further development of gramophones led to the creation of portable models with a sound duct inside a box, known as a "gramophone". This name was first given to the apparatus of the French company Pate. Subminiature gramophones were produced with a sliding tonearm in the form of a nickel-plated metal can with a diameter of 18 cm and a height of 8 cm.

Gramophone

With the development of radio technology, the acoustic recording method was completely replaced by the electrical method, which significantly improved the quality of the recordings.

There were radiograms, players (prefixes to receivers) and electrophones.

The spring motor was replaced by an electric motor, and the membrane was replaced by a pickup (adapter).

Gramophone with electromagnetic adapter and turntable

Until the end of 1948, the recording was made with a groove 140-180 microns wide, with an average recording density of 38 grooves per 1 cm. The rotation speed was 78 rpm, and the diameter of the plates was 25-30 cm. was 3-5 minutes, which is enough for short pieces of music.

With the introduction of electric reproduction, a speed of 331/3 rpm was introduced with the same plate dimensions. The smallest diameter at 331/3 rpm was set to 19 cm in order to obtain a reasonably good playback quality at the end of the recording. The groove width was chosen not less than 100 µm. However, this did not ensure continuous recording of symphonic works. This problem was solved only with the advent of long-playing records.

In 1948, the American company Columbia announced the release of records with a groove width of up to 70 microns. The recording density has increased by about two and a half times, and the sound duration has become almost 6 times longer than 78 rpm records of the same format.

In 1949, the American company RCA Victor produced 17.5 cm 45 rpm records and a turntable for them with an automatic record changer. The recording time of one side of the plate was 5 min 5 sec, later it was increased to 9 min using a variable recording step.

In 1954, 16 rpm records appeared under the name "talking book". The long recording time (with a diameter of 25 cm, about an hour for one side) made them convenient as teaching aids and for people with poor eyesight.

As early as 1928, Columbia offered to choose the distance between the grooves depending on the amplitude, which was written in a patent published in 1933. However, this idea was forgotten. Again this issue was raised by Rein, who tested his system in 1942 and completed it in 1950.

The use of re-recording from tape recorders instead of direct recording to a disk from microphones made it possible to obtain a time-preemptive signal to control the groove shift. Rhine's scheme proved to be complicated, and variable pitch recorders offered by Columbia and Teldec were used in practice.

When recording with a variable pitch of records with a wide groove, the gain in playing time was 15%, and for long-playing records - 25%. Variable pitch records were released in 1951 by Deutsche Grammofon, at the end of 1952 by Teldec, and since 1956 they have been produced in the USSR. Records with variable pitch do not require special reproducing equipment.

In addition to mechanical recording to disk, mechanical recording to tape is known. In 1931, in Germany, Tefifon manufactured devices with mechanical recording on an endless tape.

During this period of time, A.F. Shorin suggested using film as a medium for mechanical recording of sound. He designed the "shorinophone" apparatus, which was first used for scoring films, and then for recording music and speech in radio broadcasting, which increased the duration of the recording to several hours.

Recording and playback of sound in this device was carried out electromechanically on a used film tape. Shorinofon carried out multi-track mechanical transverse recording, which was played back on the same apparatus. When using 35 mm wide film, more than 50 grooves were placed on it. With a film roll of 300 m, this made it possible to obtain an eight-hour recording in a shorinophone. The role of the recording and reproducing element in the shorinophone was performed by a special head, into which a cutter was inserted for cutting a groove, and a corundum needle for reproduction.

Once cinematography became sound, it became necessary to make the sound follow the movement of the actors along the screen. In 1930, the French film director Abel Gance carried out spatial sound reproduction in the cinema hall, for which he installed loudspeakers not only behind the screen, but also in the hall itself.

Since the advent of the telephone, the phonograph, radio broadcasting, and talkies, people have noticed the shortcomings of monophonic sound transmission. In 1881, at the World Exhibition in Paris, the inventor Clement Ader for the first time carried out two-channel sound transmission from opera house. The transmission was carried out over telephone wires connected to two groups of microphones, one of which was located to the right and the other to the left of the stage. You can listen to the broadcast over the phone with a pair of headphones. In 1912 similar experiments were repeated in Berlin.

Until 1957, LP recording was monophonic only. But experiments were also carried out in the field of stereophonic recording. In 1931, the English inventor A. Blumlein proposed a method for stereophonic recording on a disk, in which the signals of both channels were simultaneously recorded with one cutter in the same groove. In his application, for which a patent was issued, Blumlein proposes two stereo recording methods: one is a combination of transverse and depth recording, the other - two mutually perpendicular components of the cutter vibration are directed at an angle of 45 ° to the disk surface. The insufficient level of recording-playback technology did not allow Blumlein's ideas to be realized at that time.

The American engineer Cook proposed a "binaural record", each side of which contained "right" and "left" records. Both records were played by one tonearm with two heads (adapters). The uneconomical use of disk space and the complexity of synchronization prevented this method from practical application.

In the Decca Records laboratory in London, an electrical method was developed for channel separation using filters, provided that one of the channels was recorded on a subcarrier frequency. In the US, a similar method is known as the Minter system. The carrier frequency method proved to be complicated and expensive.

Finally received recognition and the method of Blumlein 45/45. In the USA, the Vestrex company developed such a system, and already in 1958 the method was recommended as a unified international method for recording stereo records. Stereo records are made in the same formats and for the same speeds as mono LPs.

With the accumulation of experience and theoretical understanding, some disadvantages and limitations inherent in two-channel stereophony were revealed: the effect of a sound dip in the middle between the speakers, a narrow zone in which a stereo effect is felt, distortions in the localization of the sound source. Began to conduct experiments on three - and four-channel sound reproduction.

In 1969-1971. the first samples of four-channel (quadraphonic) equipment appeared on the world market: tape recorders, electrophones. Gramophone records. Quadraphony was perceived as a novelty, which is unlikely to be widely used: at too high a price - doubling the number of channels - improves the stereo effect.

First gramophone records were pressed from a mixture based on shellac, which is a resin of natural origin, subsequently shellac was replaced by synthetic resins. Vinyl resin has been widely used. The exact composition of each brand of gramophone records was protected as a trade secret.

Gramophone records were recorded only in special recording studios. In 1940-1950 in Moscow on Gorky Street there was such a studio where for a small fee it was possible to record a small disc with a diameter of 15 centimeters - a sound "hello" to your relatives or friends. In those same years, on handicraft sound recording devices, jazz music records and thieves' songs, which were persecuted in those years, were clandestinely recorded. Used X-ray film served as the material for them. These plates were called "on the ribs", because bones were visible on them in the light. The sound quality on them was terrible, but in the absence of other sources they were very popular, especially among young people. For the manufacture of gramophone records, however, not only plastics were proposed, but also a number of other materials. So, for example, not only were patented in 1909, but also produced (by Carl Pivoda in Prague) glass gramophone records. According to reviews, these records hissed less than usual. Appeared on sale, including in Russia, even gramophone records made of chocolate.

magnetic sound recording

In 1927, F. Pfleimer developed a technology for manufacturing a magnetic tape on a non-magnetic basis. On the basis of this development, in 1935, the German electrical company "AEG" and the chemical company "IG Farbenindustri" demonstrated at the German radio exhibition a magnetic tape on a plastic base coated with iron powder. Mastered in industrial production, it cost 5 times cheaper than steel, it was much lighter, and most importantly, it made it possible to connect pieces by simple gluing. To use the new magnetic tape, a new sound recording device was developed, which received the brand name "Magnetofon". It became the common name for such devices.

In 1941, German engineers Braunmüll and Weber created a ring magnetic head in combination with ultrasonic bias for sound recording. This made it possible to significantly reduce noise and obtain a record of much higher quality than mechanical and optical recordings (developed by that time for sound films).

Magnetic tape is suitable for repeated sound recording. The number of such records is practically unlimited. It is determined only by the mechanical strength of the new information carrier - magnetic tape.

Thus, the owner of a tape recorder, in comparison with a gramophone, not only got the opportunity to reproduce sound recorded once and for all on a gramophone record, but now he could also record sound on magnetic tape, and not in a recording studio, but at home or in a concert hall. It was this remarkable property of magnetic sound recording that ensured the wide distribution of the songs of Bulat Okudzhava, Vladimir Vysotsky and Alexander Galich during the years of the communist dictatorship. It was enough for one amateur to record these songs at their concerts in some club, as this recording spread with lightning speed among many thousands of fans. After all, with the help of two tape recorders, you can copy a record from one magnetic tape to another. The first tape recorders were reel-to-reel - in them a magnetic film was wound on reels. During recording and playback, the film was rewound from a full reel to an empty one. Before starting recording or playback, it was necessary to "load" the tape, i.e. stretch the free end of the film past the magnetic heads and fix it on an empty reel.

Reel-to-reel tape recorder with magnetic tape on reels

After the end of World War II, starting in 1945, magnetic recording became the most widely used throughout the world. On American radio, magnetic recording was first used in 1947 to broadcast a concert by popular singer Bing Crosby. In this case, parts of a captured German apparatus were used, which was brought to the United States by an enterprising American soldier demobilized from occupied Germany. Bing Crosby then invested in the production of tape recorders. In 1950, 25 models of tape recorders were already on sale in the USA.

The first two-track tape recorder was released by the German company AEG in 1957, and in 1959 this company released the first four-track tape recorder.

At first, tape recorders were tube, and only in 1956 the Japanese company Sony created the first completely transistorized tape recorder.

Later, cassette tape recorders replaced reel-to-reel tape recorders. The first such device was developed by Philips in 1961-1963. In it, both miniature reels - with a magnetic film and an empty one - are placed in a special compact cassette and the end of the film is pre-fixed on an empty reel. Thus, the process of charging a tape recorder with a film is significantly simplified. The first compact cassettes were released by Philips in 1963. And even later, two-cassette tape recorders appeared, in which the process of rewriting from one cassette to another was simplified as much as possible. Recording on compact cassettes - two-sided. They are issued for the recording time of 60, 90 and 120 minutes (on both sides).

Cassette recorder and compact cassette

On the basis of a standard compact cassette, Sony developed a portable player "player" the size of a postcard (Fig. 5.11)<#"117" src="/wimg/14/doc_zip11.jpg" />

Cassette player

The compact cassette "taken root" not only on the street, but also in cars for which the car radio was released. It is a combination radio and cassette recorder.

In addition to the compact cassette, a matchbox-sized microcassette was created for portable voice recorders and telephones with answering machine.

Dictaphone (from Latin dicto - I speak, I dictate) is a kind of tape recorder for recording speech with the aim, for example, of subsequent printing of its text.

microcassette

Digital voice recorders differ from mechanical voice recorders by the complete absence of moving parts. They use solid-state flash memory as a carrier instead of magnetic tape.

Optical discs

A CD is capable of storing a huge amount of information in a small physical volume. The possibility of repeated reading of the recorded data without wear of the media is also important, due to the absence of any mechanical contact between the reading device and the surface carrying the information. To this should be added the relatively low cost of the disks themselves and the devices needed to work with them. These advantages cannot fail to attract everyone who has to store huge amounts of data with minimal risk of losing it. And there are more and more of them. Wherever there are computers, there are bound to be powerful programs, archives and databases, images and sounds digitized. All this is conveniently stored on a CD.

A modern CD is a plastic disc about 120 in diameter and about 1 mm thick, with a 15 mm hole in the center. Around the hole there is an area about 10 mm wide for clamping in the spindle that rotates the disc. One side of the CD is usually beautifully designed and provided with brief information about the contents of the records.

The other - glitters and shimmers with all the colors of the rainbow. On it, around the clamping area, there is another visually distinguishable ring, on which is stamped serial number in a barcode or some other code often understood only by the disc manufacturer.

The most common CDs have the structure shown in Figure:

The thinnest reflective layer 2 of aluminum is applied to the base 1 of acrylic plastic. The metal is covered with a transparent protective polycarbonate film 3. The data is read by a laser beam 4. The usual process of making a CD consists of several stages: preparing data for recording, making a master disc (original) and matrices (negatives of the master disc), replicating a CD.

Information is applied to the smooth surface of an aluminum master disk by a laser beam, which, by changing the structure of the metal (in other words, by burning it), creates microscopic cavities on it. The alternation of differently reflecting light depressions and flat areas represents the data in the usual binary form for computers. Note that the dimensions of the depressions formed by the laser beam are very small - on a segment whose length does not exceed the thickness of a human hair, several tens of them can be accommodated.

What follows is reminiscent of the production of conventional gramophone records. The negative copies of the master disc serve as matrices for pressing the information-bearing depressions on the surface of the CD itself, which remains to be covered with aluminum, applied with a protective layer and provided with the necessary inscriptions. It is worth noting that there are other technologies for the production of CDs, including rewritable and rewritable ones, some of which will be discussed below.

Under the CD, inserted into the drive with the shiny side down and fixed in a rotating spindle, a reader moves along the radius with the help of a servomotor.

It consists of a semiconductor laser 1, a beam-splitting prism 2 with a lens 3 that focuses the beam on the disk surface 4, and a photodetector 5. The lens is equipped with drives for fine-tuning the beam position on the information track. It is clear that a laser of much lower power is used for reading than the one used to burn the depressions on the surface of the master disk.

The beam reflected by the aluminum surface is directed by the prism to the photodetector. If it is reflected from a shiny island between the depressions, an electric current appears in the photodetector circuit, the presence of which is interpreted as logical 1. The beam that falls into the depression is mostly scattered, as a result, the illumination of the photodetector and the current generated by it decrease - logical 0 is fixed.

The sensitive surface of the photodetector is divided into four sectors. This allows the microprocessor controlling the drive to determine if the beam is correctly positioned. If the beam deviated from the desired position (and this, as a rule, happens due to errors in the manufacture of the CD and the drive), the spot created by it on the surface of the photodetector will also shift, as a result of which its sectors will be illuminated unequally. Comparing the currents generated by each of the elements of the receiver, the microprocessor generates commands that correct the position of the lens, and, consequently, the beam on the surface of the reflective layer.

As already mentioned, data is recorded on a CD as a sequence of pits and intervals between them, forming one physical information track. Just one, in contrast to the usual way of recording on magnetic disks. This single track is a spiral that starts at the center of the disk and unwinds towards its edge. This CD is a bit like a traditional record, differing from it in the direction of the spiral and the non-contact method of reading data. The track begins with the service area necessary for drive synchronization: the reader must "know" when to expect the arrival of each of the recorded bits of information. A physical track can be divided into multiple logical tracks.

The continuous stream of bits read from the CD is divided into eight-bit bytes, logically grouped into sectors. Each sector consists of 12 bytes of synchronization, four bytes of a header containing the sector number and information about the type of record in it, 2048 bytes of the main data area and 288 bytes of additional information.

Several types of sectors are used. The first one is for digital audio only. The second one is the main one for all CDs. Its header is extended to 12 bytes due to the area of additional information. The rest of this area is occupied by a data reading error detection code (four bytes) and two codes that allow them to be corrected: P-parity (172 bytes) and Q-parity (104 bytes). In sectors of the third type, the additional information area is made available to the user. So each of them can contain up to 2336 bytes of data, but without the ability to control the correct reading and error correction. Each logical track consists of sectors of only one type.

The first sectors of the CD contain its contents (Volume Table of Contents, VTOC) - something like a file allocation table (FAT) on magnetic disks. In general, the basic CD format according to the HSG standard (see below) is in many ways reminiscent of the format of a floppy disk, on the zero track of which not only its main parameters (number of tracks, sectors, etc.) are indicated, but also information about the placement of data is stored (directories and files).

The system area contains directories with pointers or addresses of areas where data is stored. The essential difference from a floppy disk is that the direct addresses of files located in subdirectories are indicated in the root directory of a CD, which greatly facilitates their search.

The classic "single" data reading speed, which only audio CD players work with today, is 175 KB/s, or about 75 sectors per second. Each logical track containing 300 sectors is played back at this rate in 4 seconds. The entire CD, if it consists only of sectors of the second type, contains 663.5 MB of data.

Computers use CD drives, which provide much faster data reading by increasing the spindle speed and correspondingly changing a number of other technical characteristics.

Musical optical CDs replaced mechanically recorded vinyl (phonograph records) in 1982, almost simultaneously with the advent of the first personal computers from IBM. This was the result of a collaboration between two giants of the electronics industry - the Japanese firm Sony and the Dutch Philips.

The history of the choice of CD capacity is curious. Sony CEO Akio Morita decided that the new products should meet the requirements of classical music lovers. After conducting a survey, it turned out that the most popular classical work in Japan - Beethoven's ninth symphony - sounds about 73 minutes. Apparently, if the Japanese were more fond of Haydn's short symphonies or Wagner's operas performed in their entirety in two evenings, the development of the CD could have taken a different path. But the fact remains. It was decided that the CD should be 74 minutes and 33 seconds long.

Thus was born the standard known as the "Red Book" (Red Book). Not all music lovers were satisfied with the chosen duration of the sound, but compared to 45 minutes of short-lived vinyl records, this was a significant step forward. When 74 minutes of music were counted into information capacity, it turned out to be about 640 MB.

In late 1999, Sony announced a new Super Audio CD (SACD) medium. At the same time, the technology of the so-called "direct digital stream" DSD (Direct Stream Digital) was used. A frequency response of 0 to 100 kHz and a sampling rate of 2.8224 MHz provide a significant improvement in sound quality over conventional CDs. Due to the much higher sampling rate, filters are no longer needed during recording and playback, since the human ear perceives this stepped signal as a "smooth" analog one. This ensures compatibility with the existing CD format. New HD single layer discs, HD dual layer discs, and hybrid HD dual layer discs and CDs are being released.

The existing CDs are being replaced by a new media standard - DVD (Digital Versatil Disc or General Purpose Digital Disc). In appearance, they are no different from CDs. Their geometric dimensions are the same. The main difference between a DVD disc is a much higher recording density of information. It holds 7-26 times more information. This is achieved due to the shorter laser wavelength and the smaller spot size of the focused beam, which made it possible to halve the distance between the tracks. In addition, DVDs may have one or two layers of information. They can be accessed by adjusting the position of the laser head. On a DVD, each layer of information is twice as thin as on a CD. Therefore, it is possible to connect two discs with a thickness of 0.6 mm into one with a standard thickness of 1.2 mm. This doubles the capacity. In total, the DVD standard provides for 4 modifications: single-sided, single-layer 4.7 GB (133 minutes), single-sided, double-layer 8.8 GB (241 minutes), double-sided, single-layer 9.4 GB (266 minutes) and double-sided, dual-layer 17 GB (482 minutes). Minutes in parentheses are high digital quality video programs with digital multilingual surround sound. The new DVD standard is defined in such a way that future readers will be designed to play all previous generations of CDs, ie. respecting the principle of backward compatibility. The DVD standard allows for significantly longer playback times and improved quality of video playback compared to existing CD-ROMs and LD Video CDs.

The DVD-ROM and DVD-Video formats appeared in 1996, and later the DVD-audio format was developed to record high quality sound.

DVD drives are somewhat advanced CD-ROM drives.

CD - and DVD-optical discs became the first digital media and storage media for recording and reproducing sound and images.

Conclusion

Throughout the history of the development of the art and science of sound recording, a person strives to achieve the highest technical parameters and excellent aesthetic qualities of sound recording and reproduction, which in one way or another come down to simple definition: how close it is to the natural perception of sound by a person with his own ears in a natural environment.

Sound recording today is not only a developed branch of show business with a multi-million dollar turnover, but also (which is much more important) part of the musical and social culture, which forms the aesthetic and ethical positions of the youth of the world. The fact that 97 percent of listeners are familiar with classical works not in a live concert performance, but in a recording, does not surprise anyone. Annually, interdisciplinary conferences and seminars are held, dedicated to both the problems of standardization and the problems of preservation and restoration of records, the creation of international audio archive resources. Specialists are endlessly arguing about the advantages and disadvantages of various methods of signal conversion in sound engineering, the rate of obsolescence of sound recording and reproducing equipment beyond the sound barrier. All this makes the task of historical and technical analysis of the development of sound engineering more than relevant.