Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription

and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound
effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital
recording.
Acoustic analog recording is achieved by a microphone diaphragm that senses changes
in atmospheric pressure caused by acoustic sound waves and records them as a mechanical
representation of the sound waves on a medium such as a phonograph record (in which a stylus
cuts grooves on a record). In magnetic tape recording, the sound waves vibrate the microphone
diaphragm and are converted into a varying electric current, which is then converted to a
varying magnetic field by an electromagnet, which makes a representation of the sound as
magnetized areas on a plastic tape with a magnetic coating on it. Analog sound reproduction is the
reverse process, with a larger loudspeaker diaphragm causing changes to atmospheric pressure to
form acoustic sound waves.
Digital recording and reproduction converts the analog sound signal picked up by the microphone to
a digital form by the process of sampling. This lets the audio data be stored and transmitted by a
wider variety of media. Digital recording stores audio as a series of binary numbers (zeros and ones)
representing samples of the amplitude of the audio signal at equal time intervals, at a sample
rate high enough to convey all sounds capable of being heard. A digital audio signal must be
reconverted to analog form during playback before it is amplified and connected to a loudspeaker to
produce sound.

Early history[edit]

Mechanical organ, 1650

See also: History of sound recording
Long before sound was first recorded, music was recorded—first by written music notation, then also
by mechanical devices (e.g., wind-up music boxes, in which a mechanism turns a spindle, which
plucks metal tines, thus reproducing a melody). Automatic music reproduction traces back as far as
the 9th century, when the Banū Mūsā brothers invented the earliest known mechanical musical
instrument, in this case, a hydropowered (water-powered) organ that played interchangeable
cylinders. According to Charles B. Fowler, this "... cylinder with raised pins on the surface remained
the basic device to produce and reproduce music mechanically until the second half of the
nineteenth century." The Banū Mūsā brothers also invented an automatic flute player, which appears
to have been the first programmable machine.[1][2]
Carvings in the Rosslyn Chapel from the 1560s may represent an early attempt to record
the Chladni patterns produced by sound in stone representations, although this theory has not been
conclusively proved.[3][4]
In the 14th century, a mechanical bell-ringer controlled by a rotating cylinder was introduced
in Flanders.[citation needed] Similar designs appeared in barrel organs (15th century), musical
clocks (1598), barrel pianos (1805), and music boxes (c. 1800). A music box is an automatic musical
instrument that produces sounds by the use of a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder or disc so
as to pluck the tuned teeth (or lamellae) of a steel comb.
The fairground organ, developed in 1892, used a system of accordion-folded punched cardboard
books. The player piano, first demonstrated in 1876, used a punched paper scroll that could store a
long piece of music. The most sophisticated of the piano rolls were "hand-played," meaning that they
were duplicates from a master roll which had been created on a special piano, which punched holes
in the master as a live performer played the song. Thus, the roll represented a recording of the
actual performance of an individual, not just the more common method of punching the master roll
through transcription of the sheet music. This technology to record a live performance onto a piano
roll was not developed until 1904. Piano rolls were in continuous mass production from 1896 to
2008.[5][6] A 1908 U.S. Supreme Court copyright case noted that, in 1902 alone, there were between
70,000 and 75,000 player pianos manufactured, and between 1,000,000 and 1,500,000 piano rolls
produced.[7]

Phonautograph[edit]
Main article: Phonautograph

Au Clair de la Lune
Duration: 21 seconds.0:21
This 1860 phonautogram by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville is the earliest known recording of a person singing.

Problems playing this file? See media help.

The first device that could record actual sounds as they passed through the air (but could not play
them back—the purpose was only visual study) was the phonautograph, patented in 1857 by
Parisian inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. The earliest known recordings of the human
voice are phonautograph recordings, called phonautograms, made in 1857.[8] They consist of sheets
of paper with sound-wave-modulated white lines created by a vibrating stylus that cut through a
coating of soot as the paper was passed under it. An 1860 phonautogram of "Au Clair de la Lune", a
French folk song, was played back as sound for the first time in 2008 by scanning it and using
software to convert the undulating line, which graphically encoded the sound, into a corresponding
digital audio file.[8][9]

Phonograph[edit]
Thomas Edison's work on two other innovations, the telegraph and the telephone, led to the
development of the phonograph. Edison was working on a machine in 1877 that would transcribe
telegraphic signals onto paper tape, which could then be transferred over the telegraph again and
again. The phonograph was both in a cylinder and a disc form.[citation needed]
Cylinder[edit]
"Kham Hom" ("Sweet Words")
Duration: 1 minute and 58 seconds.1:58
Phonograph cylinder recording of Siamese (Thai) musicians visiting Berlin, Germany in 1900

Problems playing this file? See media help.

On April 30, 1877, French poet, humorous writer and inventor Charles Cros submitted a sealed
envelope containing a letter to the Academy of Sciences in Paris fully explaining his proposed
method, called the paleophone.[10] Though no trace of a working paleophone was ever found, Cros is
remembered by some historians as an early inventor of a sound recording and reproduction
machine.[11]
The first practical sound recording and reproduction device was the mechanical phonograph
cylinder, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877 and patented in 1878.[12][13] The invention soon spread
across the globe and over the next two decades the commercial recording, distribution, and sale of
sound recordings became a growing new international industry, with the most popular titles selling
millions of units by the early 1900s.[14] A process for mass-producing duplicate wax cylinders by
molding instead of engraving them was put into effect in 1901.[15] The development of mass-
production techniques enabled cylinder recordings to become a major new consumer item in
industrial countries and the cylinder was the main consumer format from the late 1880s until around
1910.[citation needed]
Disc[edit]
Duration: 12 seconds.0:12Recording of Bell's voice on a wax disc in 1885, identified in 2013 [more

details] Emile Berliner with disc record gramophone

The next major technical development was the invention of the gramophone record, generally
credited to Emile Berliner[by whom?] and patented in 1887,[16] though others had demonstrated similar disk
apparatus earlier, most notably Alexander Graham Bell in 1881.[17] Discs were easier to manufacture,
transport and store, and they had the additional benefit of being marginally louder than cylinders.
Sales of the gramophone record overtook the cylinder ca. 1910, and by the end of World War I the
disc had become the dominant commercial recording format. Edison, who was the main producer of
cylinders, created the Edison Disc Record in an attempt to regain his market. The double-sided
(nominally 78 rpm) shellac disc was the standard consumer music format from the early 1910s to the
late 1950s. In various permutations, the audio disc format became the primary medium for consumer
sound recordings until the end of the 20th century.
Although there was no universally accepted speed, and various companies offered discs that played
at several different speeds, the major recording companies eventually settled on a de facto industry
standard of nominally 78 revolutions per minute. The specified speed was 78.26 rpm in America and
77.92 rpm throughout the rest of the world. The difference in speeds was due to the difference in the
cycle frequencies of the AC electricity that powered the stroboscopes used to calibrate recording
lathes and turntables.[18] The nominal speed of the disc format gave rise to its common nickname, the
"seventy-eight" (though not until other speeds had become available). Discs were made of shellac or
similar brittle plastic-like materials, played with needles made from a variety of materials including
mild steel, thorn, and even sapphire. Discs had a distinctly limited playing life that varied depending
on how they were manufactured.
Earlier, purely acoustic methods of recording had limited sensitivity and frequency range. Mid-
frequency range notes could be recorded, but very low and very high frequencies could not.
Instruments such as the violin were difficult to transfer to disc. One technique to deal with this
involved using a Stroh violin which uses a conical horn connected to a diaphragm that in turn is
connected to the violin bridge. The horn was no longer needed once electrical recording was
developed.
The long-playing 331⁄3 rpm microgroove LP record, was developed at Columbia Records and
introduced in 1948. The short-playing but convenient 7-inch (18 cm) 45 rpm microgroove
vinyl single was introduced by RCA Victor in 1949. In the US and most developed countries, the two
new vinyl formats completely replaced 78 rpm shellac discs by the end of the 1950s, but in some
corners of the world, the 78 lingered on far into the 1960s.[19] Vinyl was much more expensive than
shellac, one of the several factors that made its use for 78 rpm records very unusual, but with a long-
playing disc the added cost was acceptable. The compact 45 format required very little material.
Vinyl offered improved performance, both in stamping and in playback. Vinyl records were, over-
optimistically, advertised as "unbreakable". They were not, but they were much less fragile than
shellac, which had itself once been touted as "unbreakable" compared to wax cylinders.

Electrical[edit]
Further information: Music technology (electric)

RCA-44, a classic ribbon microphone introduced in 1932.

Similar units were widely used for recording and broadcasting in the 1940s and are occasionally
still used today.
Sound recording began as a purely mechanical process. Except for a few crude telephone-based
recording devices with no means of amplification, such as the telegraphone,[a] it remained so until the
1920s. Between the invention of the phonograph in 1877 and the first commercial digital
recordings in the early 1970s, arguably the most important milestone in the history of sound
recording was the introduction of what was then called electrical recording, in which
a microphone was used to convert the sound into an electrical signal that was amplified and used to
actuate the recording stylus. This innovation eliminated the "horn sound" resonances characteristic
of the acoustical process, produced clearer and more full-bodied recordings by greatly extending the
useful range of audio frequencies, and allowed previously unrecordable distant and feeble sounds to
be captured. During this time, several radio-related developments in electronics converged to
revolutionize the recording process. These included improved microphones and auxiliary devices
such as electronic filters, all dependent on electronic amplification to be of practical use in recording.
In 1906, Lee De Forest invented the Audion triode vacuum tube, an electronic valve that could
amplify weak electrical signals. By 1915, it was in use in long-distance telephone circuits that made
conversations between New York and San Francisco practical. Refined versions of this tube were
the basis of all electronic sound systems until the commercial introduction of the first transistor-
based audio devices in the mid-1950s.
During World War I, engineers in the United States and Great Britain worked on ways to record and
reproduce, among other things, the sound of a German U-boat for training purposes. Acoustical
recording methods of the time could not reproduce the sounds accurately. The earliest results were
not promising.
The first electrical recording issued to the public, with little fanfare, was of November 11, 1920,
funeral service for The Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, London. The recording engineers
used microphones of the type used in contemporary telephones. Four were discreetly set up in the
abbey and wired to recording equipment in a vehicle outside. Although electronic amplification was
used, the audio was weak and unclear, as only possible in those circumstances. For several years,
this little-noted disc remained the only issued electrical recording.
Several record companies and independent inventors, notably Orlando Marsh, experimented with
equipment and techniques for electrical recording in the early 1920s. Marsh's electrically
recorded Autograph Records were already being sold to the public in 1924, a year before the first
such offerings from the major record companies, but their overall sound quality was too low to
demonstrate any obvious advantage over traditional acoustical methods. Marsh's microphone
technique was idiosyncratic and his work had little if any impact on the systems being developed by
others.[20]
Telephone industry giant Western Electric had research laboratories[b] with material and human
resources that no record company or independent inventor could match. They had the best
microphone, a condenser type developed there in 1916 and greatly improved in 1922,[21] and the best
amplifiers and test equipment. They had already patented an electromechanical recorder in 1918,
and in the early 1920s, they decided to intensively apply their hardware and expertise to developing
two state-of-the-art systems for electronically recording and reproducing sound: one that employed
conventional discs and another that recorded optically on motion picture film. Their engineers
pioneered the use of mechanical analogs of electrical circuits and developed a superior "rubber line"
recorder for cutting the groove into the wax master in the disc recording system.[22]
By 1924, such dramatic progress had been made that Western Electric arranged a demonstration for
the two leading record companies, the Victor Talking Machine Company and the Columbia
Phonograph Company. Both soon licensed the system and both made their earliest published
electrical recordings in February 1925, but neither actually released them until several months later.
To avoid making their existing catalogs instantly obsolete, the two long-time archrivals agreed
privately not to publicize the new process until November 1925, by which time enough electrically
recorded repertory would be available to meet the anticipated demand. During the next few years,
the lesser record companies licensed or developed other electrical recording systems. By 1929 only
the budget label Harmony was still issuing new recordings made by the old acoustical process.
Comparison of some surviving Western Electric test recordings with early commercial releases
indicates that the record companies artificially reduced the frequency range of recordings so they
would not overwhelm non-electronic playback equipment, which reproduced very low frequencies as
an unpleasant rattle and rapidly wore out disc