Music Technology Development 1982-2014

CD
1. A digital optical disc data storage format
2. Phillips demonstrated the compact disc in 1981
  1. It became commercially available a year later
3. Originally developed to store and play only sounds recordings but was later adapted for data storage (CD-ROM) and other purposes
4. In 1982 Sony and Phillips launch the CD player
5. In 1988 CD sales exceed LP sales for the first time
6. Standard CDs can hold up to 80 minutes of uncompressed audio or about 700MiB of data
7. When it was first introduced the CD had greater capacity than a typical personal computer hard drive.
8. Read by a laser
9. They are susceptible to damage during handling and environmental exposure
10. The digital data on a CD starts at the disc centre and proceeds towards the edge, allowing adaptation to different size formats
11. Recordable CDs are usable at home, widely available and able to record audio at higher speeds than real-time
12. Red book (standards)
13. Used for media in general
14. Evolved into DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) for storage
DAT
1. Digital Audio Tape or R-DAT
2. A signal recording and playback medium developed by Sony in 1987
3. An analogue tape format, which allowed musicians to record digitally
4. Technology had first been used in the 1960s for recording video
5. Digital tape recorder with rotating heads
6. Usually records at a rate of 44.1kHz (the CD standard) and 48kHz.
7. Particularly good for mastering
8. Favoured in studios, particularly for final mixes in the 80-90s although today it's been superseded by hard disc recording
9. ADAT utilised highly available VHS tapes, which was a cost-effective multi-track solution
10. Particles of ferric oxide coated on polyester strips are arranged in a random pattern until they receive a magnetic signal from the recording head of a tape recorder.
  1. If the signal is musical the particles become organised into more regular patterns that can be read and played back as an analogue copy of the original sound.
  2. An erase head is situated ahead of the record/playback head to facilitate further recording if required or remove unwanted magnetic signals before recording takes place
    1. Record and playback heads used to be separate, which created a slight delay but once they became united the possibility of monitoring the original take and recording a new one on another parallel track led to multi-tracking.
      1. New textures could be produced
  3. The wider the tape,
    1. the faster it ran,
      1. the higher the quality of reproduction,
        which offered less background hiss, a better high frequency response and fewer dropouts (audible glitches created by flaws in the magnetic tape).
  4. Later chromium oxide
11. Commercial inch tape was the widest available format
Minidisc
1. A compact data storage medium
2. Highly portable
3. 64mm across
4. Used a rewritable magneto-optical material
5. During recording a laser beam heated the magnetic material, which changed its characteristics. An electromagnet could read these changes.
6. Comes in 2 varieties: playback only and recordable
7. Introduced by Sony in late 1992
8. Skips ahead so it can read the data earlier to prevent the listener from hearing any buffering delays
9. Offers less physical storage than a CD - around 177MB compared to 650MB
10. Could still store 74 minutes approx of digital music encoded in a compressed format
  1. Sony had to use ATRAC (their audio compression format) so some sound was lost like in MP3.
Digital recording
1. RAM (Random Access Memory)
  1. An area in a computer's circuits where info is held temporarily.
  2. Data can be accessed in any order but is lost when the system is powered down
  3. Replaced hardware multitrack recorders because of the non-destructive editing bonus
2. Portable digital recorders are gradually being superseded by laptop computers for location recordings of concerts
3. Encoding of analogue signals into binary language, which computers and chip-based technology can understand, has revolutionised the industry
4. Computing capability and memory has become increasingly powerful with silicon chips that contain hundreds (1960s) and then billions of transistors
5. Software has developed. Digital audio recording has moved from specialised equipment to easily installed software packages
6. Windows and Mac computers are the market leaders with software dividing into scoring packages (Sibelius, Finale) to complete virtual studios (Cubase, Logic, Reason)
7. Equipment for audio capture has become cheaper and more capable
8. Due to increased computing power of faster processors and larger RAM, recordings of CD quality and above can be carried out on laptops instead of only in professional studios
  1. 70s and 80s
9. Portable hard disc recorders emerged
10. Due to developments in audio compression, digital music transfers are normal
  1. iPods and mobile phones can reproduce music at an acceptable quality
11. Clubs are increasingly catering for digital DJing formats

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Music Technology Development 1982-2014

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	Created by Hazel Meades over 9 years ago