Talk:Sound recording and reproduction

Wiki Education assignment: Reading Culture

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 18 January 2022 and 11 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Fathiya04 (article contribs).

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion:

• Magnetic-tape-acetate-vs-polyester-backing.jpg

You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 17:52, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Mountain Chief image

I removed the photo of chief Mountain Chief, which unfortunately had an inaccurate caption. He is listening to a recording, not recording it. Schierbecker (talk) 19:23, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

The article is about recording and reproduction. An alternative is to restore the image and correct the caption. ~Kvng (talk) 14:09, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Restore the image with a corrected title. It's a nice image to see in the intro.Orenburg1 (talk) 10:42, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

It is unimportant whether the image shows listening back or recording. The session with Mountain Chief certainly involved the recording of his voice, so the photo is relevant. In fact, it is probably a posed photograph, with the cylinder unmoving and the humans holding still. But it is a fine image, perfectly suitable for this topic, and it should be restored. Binksternet (talk) 16:07, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Three editors support restoring so I have restored with improved caption. ~Kvng (talk) 16:41, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Phonograph record article and history of recorded sound

Trying to improve the Phonograph record article; see Talk:Phonograph record. One issue is that there is (in the "Predecessors" section) a substantial amount of interesting audio history which is largely tangential to the supposed main topic of the article. Possibly would be better merged into here, or a separate "History of recorded sound" article. Other thoughts and suggestions? -- Infrogmation (talk) 15:38, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

There is a lot of overlap in History sections of various sound technology articles. Other examples include Tape recorder and Digital audio. And, we already have History of sound recording. We should work on moving all the detail there and thinning the other stuff. ~Kvng (talk) 16:09, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Pruning unsourced material

I have restored some of the material cut by Binksternet. It is not clearly bad and I am hopeful we can find sourcing for a lot of this in the articles linked in the deleted material. ~Kvng (talk) 21:23, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

I deleted no sources. The literature will have to be searched to source this stuff. Binksternet (talk) 23:04, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

The deletion was appropriate. Both sections were flagged for an extended time as being unsourced: one for over a year, the other for over six years. It's pointless to restore them in the hopes that someone will add sources if they haven't by now. It would be okay to restore some or all of the text, but only with appropriate sourcing. TJRC (talk) 02:29, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Challenged unsourced material can be removed. Other than just being unsourced, is there something in the removed material that does not look right? I reviewed the material when I restored it and didn't flag anything. I didn't see any notes associated with the original tags. There are WP:NODEADLINES for providing sources for uncontroversial material and the idea that if it hasn't happened in x years, it's never going to happen is unproductive. ~Kvng (talk) 15:38, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

TJRC removed the material again with WP:ES, "Both these recently-deleted sections were flagged for an extended time as being unsourced: one for over a year, the other for over six years. It's pointless to restore them in the hopes that someone will add sources if they haven't by now. It would be okay to restore some or all of the text, but only with appropriate sourcing." This is a restatement of TJRC's statement above doesn't answer my concerns. ~Kvng (talk) 14:15, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

The policies you point to really do not support your positions.

WP:NODEADLINES is an essay about administrative discussions, not article content. It has nothing to do with article content and sourcing, and is completely inapplicable to that. No where in that essay does it say that article content should be retained with no cited evidence for its accuracy.

The other citation is to the essay WP:Don't demolish the house while it's still being built. Obviously, leaving unsupported claims in an article for six years after its been challenged is not demolishing the house when it's being built.

There is no policy, guideline or essay that I am aware of that suggests that material should be left in an article with no regard for its accuracy. TJRC (talk) 00:57, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Clearly there is a difference between unsourced stuff that can easily be sourced, and unsourced stuff that is not commonly found in the general topic literature. Anyone wanting to restore the disputed text will need to blast through the literature and see whether they can source it. Binksternet (talk) 03:10, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

It is unclear to me what is being challenged here other than a failure to provide sources within an arbitrary period of time. Has anyone identified anything factually dubious with this material? I've had this article on my watch list for years and finished a top-to-bottom review of it in January 2023. All I can come up with reviewing again here is missing background on Deutsche Cassette and a potentially dubious assertion that quad was a spin-off development from multitrack recording. ~Kvng (talk) 15:48, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

We don't include material in articles merely because it might be accurate. I don't understand why this seems controversial. TJRC (talk) 20:16, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

That makes two of us ~Kvng (talk) 01:12, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm going to lay down a copy of the deleted material and work on it here. ~Kvng (talk) 17:57, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

1950s to 1980s

Magnetic tape transformed the recording industry. By the early 1950s, most commercial recordings were mastered on tape instead of recorded directly to disc. Tape facilitated a degree of manipulation in the recording process that was impractical with mixes and multiple generations of directly recorded discs. An early example is Les Paul's 1951 recording of How High the Moon, on which Paul played eight overdubbed guitar tracks. In the 1960s Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, Frank Zappa, and The Beatles (with producer George Martin) were among the first popular artists to explore the possibilities of multitrack recording techniques and effects on their landmark albums Pet Sounds, Freak Out!, and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The next important innovation was small cartridge-based tape systems, of which the compact cassette, commercialized by the Philips electronics company in 1964, is the best known. Initially a low-fidelity format for spoken-word voice recording and inadequate for music reproduction, after a series of improvements it entirely replaced the competing consumer tape formats: the larger 8-track tape (used primarily in cars). The compact cassette became a major consumer audio format and advances in electronic and mechanical miniaturization led to the development of the Sony Walkman, a pocket-sized cassette player introduced in 1979. The Walkman was the first personal music player and it gave a major boost to sales of prerecorded cassettes.

A key advance in audio fidelity came with the Dolby A noise reduction system, invented by Ray Dolby and introduced into professional recording studios in 1966. It suppressed the background of hiss, which was the only easily audible downside of mastering on tape instead of recording directly to disc. A competing system, dbx, invented by David Blackmer, also found success in professional audio. A simpler variant of Dolby's noise reduction system, known as Dolby B, greatly improved the sound of cassette tape recordings by reducing the especially high level of hiss that resulted from the cassette's miniaturized tape format. The compact cassette format also benefited from improvements to the tape itself as coatings with wider frequency responses and lower inherent noise were developed, often based on cobalt and chrome oxides as the magnetic material instead of the more usual iron oxide.

The multitrack audio cartridge had been in wide use in the radio industry, from the late 1950s to the 1980s, but in the 1960s the pre-recorded 8-track tape was launched as a consumer audio format by the Lear Jet aircraft company. Aimed particularly at the automotive market, they were the first practical, affordable car hi-fi systems, and could produce sound quality superior to that of the compact cassette. The smaller size and greater durability — augmented by the ability to create home-recorded music mixtapes since 8-track recorders were rare — saw the cassette become the dominant consumer format for portable audio devices in the 1970s and 1980s.

There had been experiments with multi-channel sound for many years – usually for special musical or cultural events – but the first commercial application of the concept came in the early 1970s with the introduction of Quadraphonic sound. This spin-off development from multitrack recording used four tracks (instead of the two used in stereo) and four speakers to create a 360-degree audio field around the listener. Following the release of the first consumer 4-channel hi-fi systems, a number of popular albums were released in one of the competing four-channel formats; among the best known are Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells and Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. Quadraphonic sound was not a commercial success, partly because of competing and somewhat incompatible four-channel sound systems (e.g., CBS, JVC, Dynaco and others all had systems) and generally poor quality, even when played as intended on the correct equipment, of the released music. It eventually faded out in the late 1970s, although this early venture paved the way for the eventual introduction of domestic surround sound systems in home theatre use, which gained popularity following the introduction of the DVD.

Cultural effects

The development of analog sound recording in the nineteenth century and its widespread use throughout the twentieth century had a huge impact on the development of music. Before analog sound recording was invented, most music was as a live performance. Throughout the medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and through much of the Romantic music era, the main way that songs and instrumental pieces were recorded was through music notation. While notation indicates the pitches of the melody and their rhythm many aspects of the performance are undocumented. Indeed, in the Medieval era, Gregorian chant did not indicate the rhythm of the chant. In the Baroque era, instrumental pieces often lack a tempo indication and usually none of the ornaments were written down. As a result, each performance of a song or piece would be slightly different.

With the development of analog sound recording, though, a performance could be permanently fixed, in all of its elements: pitch, rhythm, timbre, ornaments and expression. This meant that many more elements of a performance would be captured and disseminated to other listeners. The development of sound recording also enabled a much larger proportion of people to hear famous orchestras, operas, singers and bands, because even if a person could not afford to hear the live concert, they may be able to hear the recording. The availability of sound recording thus helped to spread musical styles to new regions, countries and continents. The cultural influence went in a number of directions. Sound recordings enabled Western music lovers to hear actual recordings of Asian, Middle Eastern and African groups and performers, increasing awareness of non-Western musical styles. At the same time, sound recordings enabled music lovers outside the West to hear the most famous North American and European groups and singers.

References