Chapter 5 - From analog to digital

Summary

This chapter will focus in on technology itself as much as music and will look at the transition in music technology, especially during the second half of the twentieth century, with the gradual introduction and eventual takeover of digital recording and computers. Lest some readers become concerned that this takeover is complete and absolute, let us acknowledge at the outset that the analog remains, from do-it-yourself electronics and circuit bending experiments to the necessity of speakers and microphones.

The story of the move from analog to digital technology is one of accumulating change rather than a single handover point, with a number of salient aspects. First, there was a substantial miniaturization of electronic components in the second half of the twentieth century, following the invention of the transistor (as developed at Bell Labs from 1947, though there are precedents). Second, digital signal processing research earlier in the century gradually made it into practical devices, which came to a head in audio consumer terms around 1982 – the introduction of the CD – but admits pre-cursors much further back. The rise of digital technology also has close links to the rise of the computer following the Second World War, through 1970s video games to a mass market in the 1980s for home computers.