7 - The development of recording technologies

Summary

Introduction

When we consider the use of sound recordings for the transport and presentation of performance, the history of sound-recording technology must be taken into account, but in doing so we need to concentrate on those types of sound recording that have provided an important influence or contribution. Short-lived systems, esoteric systems, and discussions of who invented what are not particularly interesting in this context. This presentation of the historical development will concentrate rather on the performance of the systems then, while they influenced contemporary appreciation and further development, and now, when we have a possibility of providing better signal extraction than ever before. The first is related to the reception history of sound recording, the second to realising the correctable parameters of historical recording.

Readers will have noted the somewhat clumsy expression ‘transport and presentation of performance’. This broadness of purpose is necessary because, seventy years into the development of sound recording, most records being produced began to be edited on a microscopic level into a coherent whole, presenting the performer as he or she would have played in almost ideal circumstances. From that point, performance as a specific sonic event is not created until an edited recording, perhaps in conjunction with a recording of a synthesised sound, is played. Traditional thinking about sound recording and reproduction was that it was a ‘naive’ recording, an image of sorts of a live performance, the later reproduction of an event in time that had really taken place earlier. a large degree the general public is still under this illusion.