129-418: Beautiful Noise is the tenth album by American singer-songwriter Neil Diamond , released in 1976. Diamond's third album with Columbia Records , it was produced by Robbie Robertson , known for his work with The Band . Garth Hudson of The Band also contributed organ to several songs on the album. Diamond performed the album track "Dry Your Eyes" with The Band at their farewell show The Last Waltz , which
258-403: A folded horn to provide a reasonably flat frequency response . The first electronically amplified record players reached the market only a few months later, around the start of 1926, but at first, they were much more expensive and their audio quality was impaired by their primitive loudspeakers ; they did not become common until the late 1930s. Electrical recording increased the flexibility of
387-601: A freemium business model . The freemium model many music streaming services use, such as Spotify and Apple Music , provide a limited amount of content for free, and then premium services for payment. There are two categories in which streaming services are categorized, radio or on-demand. Streaming services such as Pandora use the radio model, allowing users to select playlists but not specific songs to listen to, while services such as Apple Music allow users to listen to both individual songs and pre-made playlists. The earliest method of sound recording and reproduction involved
516-416: A laser beam, there was no physical contact between the disc and the playback mechanism, so a well-cared-for CD could be played over and over, with absolutely no degradation or loss of fidelity. CDs also represented a considerable advance in both the physical size of the medium and its storage capacity. LPs could only practically hold about 20–25 minutes of audio per side because they were physically limited by
645-420: A "live" sound. Recordings, including live, may contain editing, sound effects, voice adjustments, etc. With modern recording technology , artists can be recorded in separate rooms or at separate times while listening to the other parts using headphones ; with each part recorded as a separate track . Album covers and liner notes are used, and sometimes additional information is provided, such as analysis of
774-422: A block of wood was used in place of the snare drum , which could easily overload the recording diaphragm. In 1857, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville invented the phonautograph , the first device that could record sound waves as they passed through the air. It was intended only for visual study of the recording and could not play back the sound. The recording medium was a sheet of soot-coated paper wrapped around
903-458: A brown heavy paper sleeve with a large hole in the center so the record's label could be seen. The fragile records were stored on their sides. By the mid-1920s, photo album publishers sold collections of empty sleeves of heavier paper in bound volumes with stiff covers slightly larger than the 10" popular records. (Classical records measured 12".) On the paper cover in small type were the words "Record Album". Now records could be stored vertically with
1032-412: A collection of pieces or songs on a single record was called an "album"; the word was extended to other recording media such as compact disc, MiniDisc , compact audio cassette, 8-track tape and digital albums as they were introduced. An album (Latin albus , white), in ancient Rome, was a board chalked or painted white, on which decrees, edicts, and other public notices were inscribed in black. It
1161-403: A compilation of songs created by any average listener of music. The songs on a mixtape generally relate to one another in some way, whether it be a conceptual theme or an overall sound. After the introduction of Compact discs, the term "Mixtape" began to apply to any personal compilation of songs on any given format. The sales of Compact Cassettes eventually began to decline in the 1990s, after
1290-407: A constant speed past a recording head . An electrical signal, which is analogous to the sound that is to be recorded, is fed to the recording head, inducing a pattern of magnetization similar to the signal. A playback head can then pick up the changes in the magnetic field from the tape and convert it into an electrical signal. With the addition of electronic amplification developed by Curt Stille in
1419-523: A continuous flow of sound. The first all-digitally-recorded popular music album, Ry Cooder 's Bop 'Til You Drop , was released in 1979, and from that point, digital sound recording and reproduction quickly became the new standard at every level, from the professional recording studio to the home hi-fi. Although a number of short-lived hybrid studio and consumer technologies appeared in this period (e.g. Digital Audio Tape or DAT, which recorded digital signal samples onto standard magnetic tape), Sony assured
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#17330934819321548-424: A current or former member of a musical group which is released under that artist's name only, even though some or all other band members may be involved. The solo album appeared as early as the late 1940s. A 1947 Billboard magazine article heralded " Margaret Whiting huddling with Capitol execs over her first solo album on which she will be backed by Frank De Vol ". There is no formal definition setting forth
1677-557: A customer buys a whole album rather than just one or two songs from the artist. The song is not necessarily free nor is it available as a stand-alone download, adding also to the incentive to buy the complete album. In contrast to hidden tracks , bonus tracks are included on track listings and usually do not have a gap of silence between other album tracks. Bonus tracks on CD or vinyl albums are common in Japan for releases by European and North American artists; since importing international copies of
1806-403: A dramatic change in the performance style of singers, ushering in the age of the crooner , while electronic amplification had a wide-ranging impact in many areas, enabling the development of broadcast radio, public address systems, and electronically amplified home record players. In addition, the development of electronic amplifiers for musical instruments now enabled quieter instruments such as
1935-458: A feed mechanism. The advent of electrical recording in 1925 made it possible to use sensitive microphones to capture the sound and greatly improved the audio quality of records. A much wider range of frequencies could be recorded, the balance of high and low frequencies could be controlled by elementary electronic filters, and the signal could be amplified to the optimum level for driving the recording stylus. The leading record labels switched to
2064-461: A few hours to several years. This process usually requires several takes with different parts recorded separately, and then brought or " mixed " together. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing are termed "live", even when done in a studio. Studios are built to absorb sound, eliminating reverberation , to assist in mixing different takes; other locations, such as concert venues and some "live rooms", have reverberation, which creates
2193-419: A magnetic recording is made on thin steel or stainless steel wire. The wire is pulled rapidly across a recording head, which magnetizes each point along the wire in accordance with the intensity and polarity of the electrical audio signal being supplied to the recording head at that instant. By later drawing the wire across the same or a similar head while the head is not being supplied with an electrical signal,
2322-402: A narrow segment of the audible sound spectrum — typically only from around 250 Hz up to about 2,500 Hz — so musicians and engineers were forced to adapt to these sonic limitations. Musical ensembles of the period often favored louder instruments such as trumpet , cornet , and trombone ; lower-register brass instruments such as the tuba and the euphonium doubled or replaced
2451-404: A playback machine to one or more recording machines through flexible tubing, an arrangement that degraded the audio quality of the copies. Later, a pantograph mechanism was used, but it could only produce about 25 fair copies before the original was too worn down. During a recording session, as many as a dozen machines could be arrayed in front of the performers to record multiple originals. Still,
2580-420: A race to develop practical methods of providing synchronised sound with films. Some early sound films — such as the landmark 1927 film The Jazz Singer – used large soundtrack records which were played on a turntable mechanically interlocked with the projector . By the early 1930s, the movie industry had almost universally adopted sound-on-film technology, in which the audio signal to be recorded
2709-498: A recording medium for preservation and reproduction began in earnest during the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s. Many pioneering attempts to record and reproduce sound were made during the latter half of the 19th century – notably Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville 's phonautograph of 1857 – and these efforts culminated in the invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison in 1877. Digital recording emerged in
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#17330934819322838-401: A recording, a microphone, or an electrified instrument is fed through an amplifier to the loudspeaker, the varying electromagnetic field created in the coil causes it and the attached cone to move backwards and forward, and this movement generates the audio-frequency pressure waves that travel through the air to our ears, which hear them as sound. Although there have been numerous refinements to
2967-527: A reel of tape, etc.) as the primary means of capturing, manufacturing and distributing commercial sound recordings. Concurrent with the development of these digital file formats, dramatic advances in home computing and the rapid expansion of the Internet mean that digital sound recordings can now be captured, processed, reproduced, distributed and stored entirely electronically, on a range of magnetic and optical recording media, and these can be distributed anywhere in
3096-435: A rotating cylinder carried on a threaded rod. A stylus , attached to a diaphragm through a series of levers, traced a line through the soot, creating a graphic record of the motions of the diaphragm as it was minutely propelled back and forth by the audio-frequency variations in air pressure. In the spring of 1877 another inventor, Charles Cros , suggested that the process could be reversed by using photoengraving to convert
3225-469: A single artist, genre or period, a single artist covering the songs of various artists or a single artist, genre or period, or any variation of an album of cover songs which is marketed as a "tribute". History of sound recording The history of sound recording - which has progressed in waves, driven by the invention and commercial introduction of new technologies — can be roughly divided into four main periods: Experiments in capturing sound on
3354-522: A single case, or a triple album containing three LPs or compact discs. Recording artists who have an extensive back catalogue may re-release several CDs in one single box with a unified design, often containing one or more albums (in this scenario, these releases can sometimes be referred to as a "two (or three)-fer"), or a compilation of previously unreleased recordings. These are known as box sets . Some musical artists have also released more than three compact discs or LP records of new recordings at once, in
3483-494: A single take would ultimately yield only a few hundred copies at best, so performers were booked for marathon recording sessions in which they had to repeat their most popular numbers over and over again. By 1902, successful molding processes for manufacturing prerecorded cylinders had been developed. The wax cylinder got a competitor with the advent of the Gramophone, which was patented by Emile Berliner in 1887. The vibration of
3612-433: A solo album for several reasons. A solo performer working with other members will typically have full creative control of the band, be able to hire and fire accompanists, and get the majority of the proceeds. The performer may be able to produce songs that differ widely from the sound of the band with which the performer has been associated, or that the group as a whole chose not to include in its own albums. Graham Nash of
3741-414: A studio. However, the common understanding of a "live album" is one that was recorded at a concert with a public audience, even when the recording is overdubbed or multi-tracked. Concert or stage performances are recorded using remote recording techniques. Albums may be recorded at a single concert , or combine recordings made at multiple concerts. They may include applause, laughter and other noise from
3870-406: A theme such as the "greatest hits" from one artist, B-sides and rarities by one artist, or selections from a record label , a musical genre , a certain time period, or a regional music scene. Promotional sampler albums are compilations. A tribute or cover album is a compilation of cover versions of songs or instrumental compositions. Its concept may involve various artists covering the songs of
3999-464: A thin sheet of tinfoil wrapped around a grooved metal cylinder. A stylus connected to a sound-vibrated diaphragm indented the foil into the groove as the cylinder rotated. The stylus vibration was at a right angle to the recording surface, so the depth of the indentation varied with the audio-frequency changes in air pressure that carried the sound. This arrangement is known as vertical or hill-and-dale recording. The sound could be played back by tracing
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4128-509: A trend of shifting sales in the music industry , some observers feel that the early 21st century experienced the death of the album . An album may contain any number of tracks. In the United States, The Recording Academy 's rules for Grammy Awards state that an album must comprise a minimum total playing time of 15 minutes with at least five distinct tracks or a minimum total playing time of 30 minutes with no minimum track requirement. In
4257-430: A way of promoting the album. Albums have been issued that are compilations of older tracks not originally released together, such as singles not originally found on albums, b-sides of singles, or unfinished " demo " recordings. Double albums during the seventies were sometimes sequenced for record changers . In the case of a two-record set, for example, sides 1 and 4 would be stamped on one record, and sides 2 and 3 on
4386-469: Is a collection of audio recordings (e.g., music ) issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), vinyl (record), audio tape (like 8-track or cassette ), or digital . Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78 rpm records (78s) collected in a bound book resembling a photo album ; this format evolved after 1948 into single vinyl long-playing (LP) records played at 33 + 1 ⁄ 3 rpm . The album
4515-580: Is any vocal content. A track that has the same name as the album is called the title track. A bonus track (also known as a bonus cut or bonus) is a piece of music which has been included as an extra. This may be done as a marketing promotion, or for other reasons. It is not uncommon to include singles, B-sides , live recordings , and demo recordings as bonus tracks on re-issues of old albums, where those tracks were not originally included. Online music stores allow buyers to create their own albums by selecting songs themselves; bonus tracks may be included if
4644-552: Is not necessarily just in MP3 file format, in which higher quality formats such as FLAC and WAV can be used on storage media that MP3 albums reside on, such as CD-R-ROMs , hard drives , flash memory (e.g. thumbdrives , MP3 players , SD cards ), etc. The contents of the album are usually recorded in a studio or live in concert, though may be recorded in other locations, such as at home (as with JJ Cale's Okie , Beck's Odelay , David Gray's White Ladder , and others), in
4773-402: Is recorded on both the "A" and "B" side of the tape, with cassette being "turned" to play the other side of the album. Compact Cassettes were also a popular way for musicians to record " Demos " or "Demo Tapes" of their music to distribute to various record labels, in the hopes of acquiring a recording contract . Compact cassettes also saw the creation of mixtapes , which are tapes containing
4902-652: The Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft discovered the AC biasing technique. With this technique, an inaudible high-frequency signal, typically in the range of 50 to 150 kHz, is added to the audio signal before being applied to the recording head. Biasing radically improved the sound quality of magnetic tape recordings. By 1943 AEG had developed stereo tape recorders. During the war, the Allies became aware of radio broadcasts that seemed to be transcriptions (much of this due to
5031-408: The double bass , and blocks of wood stood in for bass drums . Performers also had to arrange themselves strategically around the horn to balance the sound, and to play as loudly as possible. The reproduction of domestic phonographs was similarly limited in both frequency-range and volume. By the end of the acoustic era, the disc had become the standard medium for sound recording, and its dominance in
5160-606: The guitar and the string bass to compete on equal terms with the naturally louder wind and horn instruments, and musicians and composers also began to experiment with entirely new electronic musical instruments such as the Theremin , the Ondes Martenot , the electronic organ , and the Hammond Novachord , the world's first analog polyphonic synthesizer . Contemporaneous with these developments, several inventors were engaged in
5289-517: The iPod , US album sales dropped 54.6% from 2001 to 2009. The CD is a digital data storage device which permits digital recording technology to be used to record and play-back the recorded music. Most recently, the MP3 audio format has matured, revolutionizing the concept of digital storage. Early MP3 albums were essentially CD-rips created by early CD- ripping software, and sometimes real-time rips from cassettes and vinyl. The so-called "MP3 album"
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5418-432: The 1920s, the telegraphone evolved into wire recorders which were popular for voice recording and dictation during the 1940s and into the 1950s. The reproduction quality of wire recorders was significantly lower than that achievable with phonograph disk recording technology. There were also practical difficulties, such as the tendency of the wire to become tangled or snarled. Splicing could be performed by knotting together
5547-458: The 1920s: the electro-acoustic transducer , or loudspeaker . The most common form is the dynamic loudspeaker – effectively a dynamic microphone in reverse. This device typically consists of a shallow conical diaphragm, usually of a stiff paper-like material concentrically pleated to make it more flexible, firmly fastened at its perimeter, with the coil of a moving-coil electromagnetic driver attached around its apex. When an audio signal from
5676-541: The 1950s with the recordings of Les Paul and Mary Ford , who pioneered the use of tape editing and multi-tracking to create large virtual ensembles of voices and instruments, constructed entirely from multiple taped recordings of their own voices and instruments. Magnetic tape fueled a rapid and radical expansion in the sophistication of popular music and other genres, allowing composers, producers, engineers and performers to realize previously unattainable levels of complexity. Other concurrent advances in audio technology led to
5805-514: The 1970s. Appraising the concept in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Robert Christgau said most "are profit-taking recaps marred by sound and format inappropriate to phonographic reproduction (you can't put sights, smells, or fellowship on audio tape). But for Joe Cocker and Bette Midler and Bob-Dylan -in-the-arena, the form makes a compelling kind of sense." Among
5934-443: The 25-minute mark. The album Dopesmoker by Sleep contains only a single track, but the composition is over 63 minutes long. There are no formal rules against artists such as Pinhead Gunpowder referring to their own releases under thirty minutes as "albums". If an album becomes too long to fit onto a single vinyl record or CD, it may be released as a double album where two vinyl LPs or compact discs are packaged together in
6063-470: The Gramophone's recording stylus was horizontal, parallel to the recording surface, resulting in a zig-zag groove of constant depth. This is known as lateral recording. Berliner's original patent showed a lateral recording etched around the surface of a cylinder, but in practice, he opted for the disc format. The Gramophones he soon began to market were intended solely for playing prerecorded entertainment discs and could not be used to record. The spiral groove on
6192-491: The Hollies described his experience in developing a solo album as follows: "The thing that I go through that results in a solo album is an interesting process of collecting songs that can't be done, for whatever reason, by a lot of people". A solo album may also represent the departure of the performer from the group. A compilation album is a collection of material from various recording projects or various artists, assembled with
6321-499: The Japanese electronics corporation Sony in the 1970s was instrumental with the first consumer PCM encoder PCM-F1, introduced in 1981. Unlike all previous technologies, which captured a continuous analog of the sounds being recorded, digital recording captured sound by means of a very dense and rapid series of discrete samples of the sound. When played back through a digital-to-analog converter , these audio samples are recombined to form
6450-652: The Netherlands and No. 6 in Flemish Belgium. Cash Box said of the title song "orchestration begins the tune as Diamond steps in with his well-known vocal style includes a revolving carousel organ." Record World said that "an accordion lends a distinct, atmospheric sound" to the track. All tracks composed by Neil Diamond , except "Dry Your Eyes" by Diamond and Robbie Robertson . Sales figures based on certification alone. Shipments figures based on certification alone. Album An album
6579-622: The UK, proprietary use of the name Gramophone continued for another decade until, in a court case, it was adjudged to have become genericized and so could be used freely by competing disc record makers, with the result that in British English a disc record is called a gramophone record and phonograph record is traditionally assumed to mean a cylinder. Not all cylinder records are alike. They were made of various soft or hard waxy formulations or early plastics, sometimes in unusual sizes; did not all use
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#17330934819326708-573: The United Kingdom, the criteria for the UK Albums Chart is that a recording counts as an "album" if it either has more than four tracks or lasts more than 25 minutes. Sometimes shorter albums are referred to as mini-albums or EPs . Albums such as Tubular Bells , Amarok , and Hergest Ridge by Mike Oldfield , and Yes's Close to the Edge , include fewer than four tracks, but still surpass
6837-428: The advantage that the recording medium itself was already fully developed, while tape recording was held back by the need to improve the materials and methods used to manufacture the tape. Magnetic recording was demonstrated in principle as early as 1898 by Valdemar Poulsen in his telegraphone . Magnetic wire recording, and its successor, magnetic tape recording , involve the use of a magnetized medium that moves with
6966-413: The album can be cheaper than buying a domestically released version, Japanese releases often feature bonus tracks to incentivize domestic purchase. Commercial sheet music is published in conjunction with the release of a new album (studio, compilation, soundtrack, etc.). A matching folio songbook is a compilation of the music notation of all the songs included in that particular album. It typically has
7095-516: The album's artwork on its cover and, in addition to sheet music, it includes photos of the artist. Most pop and rock releases come in standard Piano/Vocal/Guitar notation format (and occasionally Easy Piano / E-Z Play Today). Rock-oriented releases may also come in Guitar Recorded Versions edition, which are note-for-note transcriptions written directly from artist recordings. Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one-half of
7224-458: The album. If a pop or rock album contained tracks released separately as commercial singles , they were conventionally placed in particular positions on the album. During the sixties, particularly in the UK, singles were generally released separately from albums. Today, many commercial albums of music tracks feature one or more singles, which are released separately to radio, TV or the Internet as
7353-408: The allied nations gained access to a new German invention: magnetic tape recording. The technology was invented in the 1930s but remained restricted to Germany (where it was widely used in broadcasting) until the end of World War II. Magnetic tape provided another dramatic leap in audio fidelity—indeed, Allied observers first became aware of the existence of the new technology because they noticed that
7482-474: The amount of participation a band member can solicit from other members of their band, and still have the album referred to as a solo album. One reviewer wrote that Ringo Starr 's third venture, Ringo , "[t]echnically... wasn't a solo album because all four Beatles appeared on it". Three of the four members of the Beatles released solo albums while the group was officially still together. A performer may record
7611-441: The apex of the cone, was connected to an articulated scriber or stylus, and as the changing air pressure moved the diaphragm back and forth, the stylus scratched or incised an analog of the sound waves onto a moving recording medium, such as a roll of coated paper, or a cylinder or disc coated with a soft material such as wax or a soft metal. These early recordings were necessarily of low fidelity and volume and captured only
7740-510: The audience, comments by the performers between pieces, improvisation, and so on. They may use multitrack recording direct from the stage sound system (rather than microphones placed among the audience), and can employ additional manipulation and effects during post-production to enhance the quality of the recording. Notable early live albums include the double album of Benny Goodman , The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert , released in 1950. Live double albums later became popular during
7869-404: The audio quality of obviously pre-recorded programs was practically indistinguishable from live broadcasts. From 1950 onwards, magnetic tape quickly became the standard medium of audio master recording in the radio and music industries and led to the development of the first hi-fi stereo recordings for the domestic market, the development of multi-track tape recording for music, and the demise of
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#17330934819327998-593: The availability of so-called back-catalog titles stored in the archives of recording labels, thanks to the fact that labels can now convert old recordings and distribute them digitally at a fraction of the cost of physically reissuing albums on LP or CD. Digital audio has also enabled dramatic improvements in the restoration and remastering of acoustic and pre-digital electric recordings, and even freeware consumer-level digital software can very effectively eliminate scratches, surface noise and other unwanted sonic artifacts from old 78rpm and vinyl recordings and greatly enhance
8127-406: The best selling live albums are Eric Clapton 's Unplugged (1992), selling over 26 million copies, Garth Brooks ' Double Live (1998), over 21 million copies, and Peter Frampton 's Frampton Comes Alive! (1976), over 11 million copies. In Rolling Stone ' s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time , 18 albums were live albums. A solo album , in popular music , is an album recorded by
8256-498: The best-known examples of a constructed composite sound from that era is the famous " Tarzan yell " created for the series of Tarzan movies starring Johnny Weissmuller . Among the vast and often rapid changes that have taken place over the last century of audio recording, it is notable that there is one crucial audio device, invented at the start of the Electrical Era, which has survived virtually unchanged since its introduction in
8385-446: The cassette tape throughout the 1970s and early 1980s; the popularity of the cassette reached its peak during the late 1980s before sharply declining during the 1990s. The cassette had largely disappeared by the first decade of the 2000s. Most albums are recorded in a studio , although they may also be recorded in a concert venue , at home, in the field, or a mix of places. The time frame for completely recording an album varies between
8514-459: The consumer audio market by the end of the 20th century, but within another decade, rapid developments in computing technology saw it rendered virtually redundant in just a few years by the most significant new invention in the history of audio recording — the digital audio file (.wav, .mp3 and other formats). When combined with newly developed digital signal compression algorithms, which greatly reduced file sizes, digital audio files came to dominate
8643-508: The cut wire ends, but the results were not very satisfactory. On Christmas Day, 1932 the British Broadcasting Corporation first used a steel tape recorder for their broadcasts. The device used was a Marconi-Stille recorder, a huge and dangerous machine which used steel tape that had sharp edges. The tape was 0.1 inches (2.5 mm) wide and 0.003 inches (0.076 mm) thick running at 5 feet per second (1.5 m/s) past
8772-549: The diaphragm was located at the apex of a hollow cone that served to collect and focus the acoustical energy, with the performers crowded around the other end. Recording balance was achieved empirically. A performer who recorded too strongly or not strongly enough would be moved away from or nearer to the mouth of the cone. The number and kind of instruments that could be recorded were limited. Brass instruments, which recorded well, often substituted instruments such as cellos and bass fiddles, which did not. In some early jazz recordings,
8901-514: The disc as the primary mastering medium for sound. Magnetic tape also brought about a radical reshaping of the recording process—it made possible recordings of far longer duration and much higher fidelity than ever before, and it offered recording engineers the same exceptional plasticity that film gave to cinema editors—sounds captured on tape could now easily be manipulated sonically, edited, and combined in ways that were simply impossible with disc recordings. These experiments reached an early peak in
9030-442: The disc-cutting head was now electrically powered, but the actual recording process remained essentially mechanical – the signal was still physically inscribed into a wax master disc, and consumer discs were mass-produced mechanically by stamping a metal electroform made from the wax master into a suitable substance, originally a shellac -based compound and later polyvinyl plastic. The Western Electric system greatly improved
9159-476: The domestic audio market lasted until the end of the 20th century. The second wave of sound recording history was ushered in by the introduction of Western Electric 's integrated system of electrical microphones , electronic signal amplifiers and electromechanical recorders, which was adopted by major US record labels in 1925. Sound recording now became a hybrid process — sound could now be captured, amplified , filtered , and balanced electronically, and
9288-465: The domestic market, thanks to commercial innovations such as Apple's iTunes media application, and their popular iPod portable media player. However, the introduction of digital audio files, in concert with the rapid developments in home computing, soon led to an unforeseen consequence — the widespread unlicensed distribution of audio and other digital media files. The uploading and downloading of large volumes of digital media files at high speed
9417-464: The electrical process in 1925 and the rest soon followed, although one straggler in the US held out until 1929. There was a period of nearly five years, from 1925 to 1930 when the top audiophile technology for home sound reproduction consisted of a combination of electrically recorded records with the specially-developed Victor Orthophonic Victrola , an acoustic phonograph that used waveguide engineering and
9546-419: The electrical systems of aircraft. Mullin's unit soon amassed a collection of hundreds of low-quality magnetic dictating machines, but it was a chance visit to a studio at Bad Neuheim near Frankfurt while investigating radio beam rumors that yielded the real prize. Mullin was given two suitcase-sized AEG 'Magnetophon' high-fidelity recorders and fifty reels of recording tape. He had them shipped home and over
9675-430: The fidelity of sound recording, increasing the reproducible frequency range to a much wider band (between 60 Hz and 6000 Hz) and allowing a new class of professional – the audio engineer – to capture a fuller, richer, and more detailed and balanced sound on record, using multiple microphones connected to multi-channel electronic amplifiers, compressors, filters and mixers . Electrical microphones led to
9804-612: The field – as with early blues recordings, in prison, or with a mobile recording unit such as the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio . Most albums are studio albums —that is, they are recorded in a recording studio with equipment meant to give those overseeing the recording as much control as possible over the sound of the album. They minimize external noises and reverberations and have highly sensitive microphones and sound mixing equipment. Band members may record their parts in separate rooms or at separate times, listening to
9933-433: The flat surface of a disc was relatively easy to replicate: a negative metal electrotype of the original record could be used to stamp out hundreds or thousands of copies before it wore out. Early on, the copies were made of hard rubber , and sometimes of celluloid , but soon a shellac -based compound was adopted. Gramophone , Berliner's trademark name, was abandoned in the US in 1900 because of legal complications, with
10062-494: The form of a prototype. Compact Cassettes became especially popular during the 1980s after the advent of the Sony Walkman , which allowed the person to control what they listened to. The Walkman was convenient because of its size, the device could fit in most pockets and often came equipped with a clip for belts or pants. The compact cassette used double-sided magnetic tape to distribute music for commercial sale. The music
10191-480: The form of boxed sets, although in that case the work is still usually considered to be an album. Material (music or sounds) is stored on an album in sections termed tracks. A music track (often simply referred to as a track) is an individual song or instrumental recording. The term is particularly associated with popular music where separate tracks are known as album tracks; the term is also used for other formats such as EPs and singles . When vinyl records were
10320-427: The format for business dictation purposes persisted into the 1950s. Disc records, too, were sometimes made in unusual sizes, or from unusual materials, or otherwise deviated from the format norms of their eras in some substantial way. The speed at which disc records were rotated was eventually standardized at about 78 rpm, but other speeds were sometimes used. Around 1950, slower speeds became standard: 45, 33⅓, and
10449-432: The groove was engraved into the surface rather than indented. The targeted use was business communication, and in that context, the cylinder format had some advantages. When entertainment use proved to be the real source of profits, one seemingly negligible disadvantage became a major problem: the difficulty of making copies of a recorded cylinder in large quantities. At first, cylinders were copied by acoustically connecting
10578-451: The introduction of a range of new consumer audio formats and devices, on both disc and tape, including the development full-frequency-range disc reproduction, the change from shellac to polyvinyl plastic for disc manufacture, the invention of the 33rpm, 12-inch long-playing (LP) disc and the 45rpm 7-inch single , the introduction of domestic and professional portable tape recorders (which enabled high-fidelity recordings of live performances),
10707-413: The late 20th century and has since flourished with the popularity of digital music and online streaming services. The earliest practical recording technologies were entirely mechanical devices. These recorders typically used a large conical horn to collect and focus the physical air pressure of the sound waves produced by the human voice or musical instruments. A sensitive membrane or diaphragm, located at
10836-582: The later '30s, record companies began releasing albums of previously released recordings of popular music in albums organized by performer, singers or bands, or by type of music, boogie-woogie , for example. When Columbia introduced the Long Playing record format in 1948, it was natural the term album would continue. Columbia expected that the record size distinction in 78s would continue, with classical music on 12" records and popular music on 10" records, and singles on 78s. Columbia's first popular 10" LP in fact
10965-426: The live recording of a performance directly to a recording medium by an entirely mechanical process, often called acoustical recording . In the standard procedure used until the mid-1920s, the sounds generated by the performance vibrated a diaphragm with a recording stylus connected to it while the stylus cut a groove into a soft recording medium rotating beneath it. To make this process as efficient as possible,
11094-488: The longer 12-inch 78s, playing around 4–5 minutes per side. For example, in 1924, George Gershwin recorded a drastically shortened version of his new seventeen-minute composition Rhapsody in Blue with Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra. The recording was issued on both sides of a single record, Victor 55225 and ran for 8m 59s. By 1910, though some European record companies had issued albums of complete operas and other works,
11223-483: The mid-1930s, record companies had adopted the album format for classical music selections that were longer than the roughly eight minutes that fit on both sides of a classical 12" 78 rpm record. Initially the covers were plain, with the name of the selection and performer in small type. In 1938, Columbia Records hired the first graphic designer in the business to design covers, others soon followed and colorful album covers cover became an important selling feature. By
11352-479: The mid-1960s to the late 1970s when the Compact Cassette format took over. The format is regarded as an obsolete technology, and was relatively unknown outside the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. Stereo 8 was created in 1964 by a consortium led by Bill Lear of Lear Jet Corporation , along with Ampex , Ford Motor Company , General Motors , Motorola , and RCA Victor Records . It
11481-443: The other parts of the track with headphones to keep the timing right. In the 2000s, with the advent of digital recording , it became possible for musicians to record their part of a song in another studio in another part of the world, and send their contribution over digital channels to be included in the final product. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing or multi-tracking are termed "live", even when done in
11610-414: The other. The user would stack the two records onto the spindle of an automatic record changer, with side 1 on the bottom and side 2 (on the other record) on top. Side 1 would automatically drop onto the turntable and be played. When finished, the tone arm's position would trigger a mechanism which moved the arm out of the way, dropped the record with side 2, and played it. When both records had been played,
11739-564: The popular 4-track cartridge and compact cassette formats, and even the world's first sampling keyboards , the pioneering tape-based keyboard instrument the Chamberlin , and its more famous successor, the Mellotron . The fourth and current phase, the digital era, has seen rapid, dramatic and far-reaching series of changes. In a period of fewer than 20 years, all previous recording technologies were rapidly superseded by digital sound encoding, and
11868-464: The practice of issuing albums was not widely taken up by American record companies until the 1920s. By about 1910, bound collections of empty sleeves with a paperboard or leather cover, similar to a photograph album, were sold as record albums that customers could use to store their records (the term "record album" was printed on some covers). These albums came in both 10-inch and 12-inch sizes. The covers of these bound books were wider and taller than
11997-518: The preeminence of its new digital recording system by introducing, together with Philips , the digital compact disc (CD) . The compact disc rapidly replaced both the 12" album and the 7" single as the new standard consumer format and ushered in a new era of high-fidelity consumer audio. CDs are small, portable and durable, and they could reproduce the entire audible sound spectrum, with a large dynamic range (~96 dB), perfect clarity and no distortion. Because CDs were encoded and read optically, using
12126-406: The primary medium for audio recordings a track could be identified visually from the grooves and many album covers or sleeves included numbers for the tracks on each side. On a compact disc the track number is indexed so that a player can jump straight to the start of any track. On digital music stores such as iTunes the term song is often used interchangeably with track regardless of whether there
12255-459: The process, but the performance was still cut directly to the recording medium, so if a mistake was made the whole recording was spoiled. Disc-to-disc editing was possible, by using multiple turntables to play parts of different takes and recording them to a new master disc, but switching sources with split-second accuracy was difficult and lower sound quality was inevitable, so except for use in editing some early sound films and radio recordings it
12384-438: The rarely used 16⅔ rpm. The standard material for discs changed from shellac to vinyl , although vinyl had been used for some special-purpose records since the early 1930s and some 78 rpm shellac records were still being made in the late 1950s. Until the mid-1920s records were played on purely mechanical record players usually powered by a wind-up spring motor. The sound was amplified by an external or internal horn that
12513-404: The record industry as a standard format for the "album". Apart from relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound capability, it has remained the standard format for vinyl albums. The term "album" was extended to other recording media such as 8-track tape , cassette tape , compact disc , MiniDisc , and digital albums, as they were introduced. As part of
12642-617: The record not touching the shelf, and the term was applied to the collection. In the early nineteenth century, "album" was occasionally used in the titles of some classical music sets, such as Robert Schumann 's Album for the Young Opus 68, a set of 43 short pieces. With the advent of 78 rpm records in the early 1900s, the typical 10-inch disc could only hold about three minutes of sound per side, so almost all popular recordings were limited to around three minutes in length. Classical-music and spoken-word items generally were released on
12771-400: The recording and reproducing heads. This meant that the length of tape required for a half-hour program was nearly 1.8 miles (2.9 km) and a full reel weighed 55 pounds (25 kg). Engineers at AEG , working with the chemical giant IG Farben , created the world's first practical magnetic tape recorder, the 'K1', which was first demonstrated in 1935. During World War II , an engineer at
12900-451: The recording, and lyrics or librettos . Historically, the term "album" was applied to a collection of various items housed in a book format. In musical usage, the word was used for collections of short pieces of printed music from the early nineteenth century. Later, collections of related 78s were bundled in book-like albums (one side of a 78 rpm record could hold only about 3.5 minutes of sound). When LP records were introduced,
13029-497: The records inside, allowing the record album to be placed on a shelf upright, like a book, suspending the fragile records above the shelf and protecting them. In the 1930s, record companies began issuing collections of 78s by one performer or of one type of music in specially assembled albums, typically with artwork on the front cover and liner notes on the back or inside cover. Most albums included three or four records, with two sides each, making six or eight compositions per album. By
13158-452: The release and distribution Compact Discs . The 2010s saw a revival of Compact Cassettes by independent record labels and DIY musicians who preferred the format because of its difficulty to share over the internet . The compact disc format replaced both the vinyl record and the cassette as the standard for the commercial mass-market distribution of physical music albums. After the introduction of music downloading and MP3 players such as
13287-497: The result that in American English Gramophones and Gramophone records, along with disc records and players made by other manufacturers, were long ago brought under the umbrella term phonograph , a word which Edison's competitors avoided using but which was never his trademark, simply a generic term he introduced and applied to cylinders, discs, tapes and any other formats capable of carrying a sound-modulated groove. In
13416-472: The same artist or artists performing live. The first commercially issued records using overdubbing were released by the Victor Talking Machine Company in the late 1920s. However, overdubbing was of limited use until the advent of audio tape . Use of tape overdubbing was pioneered by Les Paul in the 1940s. Wire recording or magnetic wire recording is an analog type of audio storage in which
13545-445: The same groove pitch; and were not all recorded at the same speed. Early brown wax cylinders were usually cut at about 120 rpm , whereas later cylinders ran at 160 rpm for clearer and louder sound at the cost of reduced maximum playing time. As a medium for entertainment, the cylinder was already losing the format war with the disc by 1910, but the production of entertainment cylinders did not entirely cease until 1929 and use of
13674-433: The screen. The adoption of sound-on-film also helped movie-industry audio engineers to make rapid advances in the process we now know as multi-tracking , by which multiple separately-recorded audio sources (such as voices, sound effects and background music) can be replayed simultaneously, mixed together, and synchronized with the action on film to create new blended audio tracks of great sophistication and complexity. One of
13803-411: The size of the disc itself and the density of the grooves that could be cut into it — the longer the recording, the closer together the grooves and thus the lower the overall fidelity. CDs, on the other hand, were less than half the overall size of the old 12" LP format, but offered about double the duration of the average LP, with up to 80 minutes of audio. The compact disc almost totally dominated
13932-463: The sound quality of all but the most badly damaged records. In the field of consumer-level digital data storage, the continuing trend towards increasing capacity and falling costs means that consumers can now acquire and store vast quantities of high-quality digital media (audio, video, games and other applications), and build up media libraries consisting of tens or even hundreds of thousands of songs, albums, or videos — collections which, for all but
14061-617: The sounds captured in these and other types of early experimental recordings tracked them down. Rather than using rough 19th-century technology to create playable versions, they were scanned into a computer and software was used to convert their sound-modulated traces into digital audio files. Brief excerpts from two French songs and a recitation in Italian, all recorded in 1860, are the most substantial results. The phonograph , invented by Thomas Edison in 1877, could both record sound and play it back. The earliest type of phonograph sold recorded on
14190-426: The stylus along the recorded groove and acoustically coupling its resulting vibrations to the surrounding air through the diaphragm and a so-called amplifying horn. The crude tinfoil phonograph proved to be of little use except as a novelty. It was not until the late 1880s that an improved and much more useful form of the phonograph was marketed. The new machines recorded on easily removable hollow wax cylinders and
14319-426: The technology, and other related technologies have been introduced (e.g. the electrostatic loudspeaker ), the basic design and function of the dynamic loudspeaker has not changed substantially in 90 years, and it remains overwhelmingly the most common, sonically accurate and reliable means of converting electronic audio signals back into audible sound. The third wave of development in audio recording began in 1945 when
14448-682: The title track, "Beautiful Noise". "If You Know What I Mean" was a No. 1 hit on Billboard' s Easy Listening chart and reached No. 11 on the US Hit Parade . "Don't Think... Feel" reached No. 43 in the U.S. charts, while "Beautiful Noise" reached No. 13 on the UK Singles Chart , No. 7 in South Africa and No. 6 in the then West Germany. It also made it to No. 6 in Switzerland, No. 8 in Austria, No. 3 in
14577-548: The traced line into a groove that would guide the stylus, causing the original stylus vibrations to be recreated, passed on to the linked diaphragm, and sent back into the air as sound. Edison's invention of the phonograph soon eclipsed this idea, and it was not until 1887 that yet another inventor, Emile Berliner , actually photoengraved a phonautograph recording into metal and played it back. Scott's early recordings languished in French archives until 2008 when scholars keen to resurrect
14706-454: The use of high-frequency bias. American audio engineer John T. Mullin served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps and was posted to Paris in the final months of World War II. His unit was assigned to find out everything they could about German radio and electronics, including the investigation of claims that the Germans had been experimenting with high-energy directed radio beams as a means of disabling
14835-461: The user would pick up the stack, turn it over, and put them back on the spindle—sides 3 and 4 would then play in sequence. Record changers were used for many years of the LP era, but eventually fell out of use. 8-track tape (formally Stereo 8: commonly known as the eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, or simply eight-track) is a magnetic tape sound recording technology popular in the United States from
14964-487: The varying magnetic field presented by the passing wire induces a similarly varying electric current in the head, recreating the original signal at a reduced level. Magnetic wire recording was replaced by magnetic tape recording, but devices employing one or the other of these media had been more or less simultaneously under development for many years before either came into widespread use. The principles and electronics involved are nearly identical. Wire recording initially had
15093-441: The wealthiest, would have been both physically and financially impossible to amass in such quantities if they were on 78 or LP, yet which can now be contained on storage devices no larger than the average hardcover book. The digital audio file marked the end of one era in recording and the beginning of another. Digital files effectively eliminated the need to create or use a discrete, purpose-made physical recording medium (a disc, or
15222-477: The work of Richard H. Ranger ), but their audio quality was indistinguishable from that of a live broadcast and their duration was far longer than was possible with 78 rpm discs. At the end of the war, the Allies captured a number of German Magnetophon recorders from Radio Luxembourg which aroused great interest. These recorders incorporated all of the key technological features of analog magnetic recording, particularly
15351-432: The world, with no loss of fidelity, and crucially, without the need to first transfer these files to some form of permanent recording medium for shipment and sale. Music streaming services have gained popularity since the late 2000s. Streaming audio does not require the listener to own the audio files. Instead, they listen over the internet. Streaming services offer an alternative method of consuming music and some follow
15480-592: Was Frank Sinatra's first album, the four-record eight-song The Voice of Frank Sinatra , originally issued in 1946. RCA's introduction of the smaller 45 rpm format later in 1948 disrupted Columbia's expectations. By the mid-1950s, 45s dominated the singles market and 12" LPs dominated the album market and both 78s and 10" LPs were discontinued. In the 1950s albums of popular music were also issued on 45s, sold in small heavy paper-covered "gate-fold" albums with multiple discs in sleeves or in sleeves in small boxes. This format disappeared around 1960. Sinatra's "The Voice"
15609-540: Was a further development of the similar Stereo-Pak four-track cartridge created by Earl "Madman" Muntz . A later quadraphonic version of the format was announced by RCA in April 1970 and first known as Quad-8, then later changed to just Q8. The Compact Cassette was a popular medium for distributing pre-recorded music from the early 1970s to the early 2000s. The first "Compact Cassette" was introduced by Philips in August 1963 in
15738-407: Was coupled to the diaphragm and stylus , although there was no real amplification: the horn simply improved the efficiency with which the diaphragm's vibrations were transmitted into the open air. The recording process was, in essence, the same non-electronic setup operating in reverse, but with a recording, stylus engraving a groove into a soft waxy master disc and carried slowly inward across it by
15867-408: Was facilitated by freeware file-sharing technologies such as Napster and BitTorrent . Although infringement remains a significant issue for copyright owners, the development of digital audio has had considerable benefits for consumers and labels. In addition to facilitating the high-volume, low-cost transfer and storage of digital audio files, this new technology has also powered an explosion in
15996-535: Was filmed by director Martin Scorsese and made into a 1978 documentary of the same title. Beautiful Noise marked a radical departure in production, style, arrangements and compositional diversity for Diamond. It was billed at the time of its release as something of a "comeback" album for the artist and did mark a new and highly productive phase of his recording and touring career. The album produced three singles: " If You Know What I Mean ", " Don't Think... Feel ", and
16125-414: Was from this that in medieval and modern times, album came to denote a book of blank pages in which verses, autographs, sketches, photographs and the like are collected. This in turn led to the modern meaning of an album as a collection of audio recordings issued as a single item. The first audio albums were actually published by the publishers of photograph albums. Single 78 rpm records were sold in
16254-399: Was issued in 1952 on two extended play 45s, with two songs on each side, in both packagings. The 10-inch and 12-inch LP record (long play), or 33 + 1 ⁄ 3 rpm microgroove vinyl record, is a gramophone record format introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. A single LP record often had the same or similar number of tunes as a typical album of 78s, and it was adopted by
16383-439: Was rarely done. Electrical recording made it more feasible to record one part to disc and then play that back while playing another part, recording both parts to a second disc. This and conceptually related techniques, known as overdubbing , enabled studios to create recorded performances that feature one or more artists each singing multiple parts or playing multiple instrument parts and that therefore could not be duplicated by
16512-411: Was the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption from the mid-1960s to the early 21st century, a period known as the album era . Vinyl LPs are still issued, though album sales in the 21st-century have mostly focused on CD and MP3 formats. The 8-track tape was the first tape format widely used alongside vinyl from 1965 until being phased out by 1983, being gradually supplanted by
16641-399: Was used to modulate a light source that was imaged onto the moving film through a narrow slit, allowing it to be photographed as variations in the density or width of a soundtrack running along a dedicated area of the film. The projector used a steady light and a photoelectric cell to convert the variations back into an electrical signal, which was amplified and sent to loudspeakers behind
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