The Nord Electro is a series of electronic keyboards , developed in Sweden by Clavia , that digitally emulate electro-mechanical keyboards, such as electric pianos and electronic organs , while being much more portable.
134-419: The original Nord Electro has two sections. One was a sample-player intended for electric pianos, although samples of acoustic grand and upright pianos are also available. The sample libraries are exchangeable, and Clavia has made several samples libraries available for free for Nord Electro owners. The second section is a digital emulation of electronic organs. This is not sample based, but instead generated by
268-463: A Rhodes Stage 73 , a Wurlitzer electric piano , a Hohner Clavinet and an acoustic grand piano. The Electro was released in 61- and 73-key versions as well as a rack version, which featured all the same controls as the keyboard versions. In 2002, the Nord Electro 2 was released. It contained new and updated software, but the electronics were identical to the original Electro, which permitted
402-398: 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 33 1 ⁄ 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
536-424: A bank approach, each instrument is assigned to a different MIDI channel and multiple banks can be stored to reconfigure the sampler. A different and more powerful approach is to associate each instrument with a patch number or ID so that each MIDI channel can be configured separately by sending controller information on the individual channel. Many samplers work as described above: the keymapping system "spread out"
670-512: 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
804-685: A sound track . The projector used a steady light and a photodetector to convert these variations back into an electrical signal, which was amplified and sent to loudspeakers behind the screen. Optical sound became the standard motion picture audio system throughout the world and remains so for theatrical release prints despite attempts in the 1950s to substitute magnetic soundtracks. Currently, all release prints on 35 mm movie film include an analog optical soundtrack, usually stereo with Dolby SR noise reduction. In addition, an optically recorded digital soundtrack in Dolby Digital or Sony SDDS form
938-435: A "loop crossfade" is indicated, allowing less obvious transitions at the loop point by fading the end of the loop out while fading its beginning in. Keymaps are arranged into instruments . At this level parameters may be added to define how the keymaps are played. Filters can be applied to change the sound-color while low frequency oscillators and envelope generators can shape the amplitude, pitch, filter or other parameters of
1072-469: A Brahms Serenade, and the last movement of Bruckner's 8th Symphony with Von Karajan. Other early German stereophonic tapes are believed to have been destroyed in bombings. Not until Ampex introduced the first commercial two-track tape recorders in the late 1940s did stereo tape recording become commercially feasible. Despite the availability of multitrack tape, stereo did not become the standard system for commercial music recording for some years, and remained
1206-407: 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. Thomas Edison's work on two other innovations, the telegraph and the telephone, led to
1340-485: A condenser type developed there in 1916 and greatly improved in 1922, 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
1474-528: A digital filter (18 dB/octave), an LFO, and two ADSR envelope generators (for amplitude and filtering). The S1000 also offered up to 8 different loop points. Additional functions included Autolooping, Crossfade Looping, Loop in Release (which cycles through the loop as the sound decays), Loop Until Release (which cycles through the loop until the note begins its decay), Reverse and Time Stretch (version 1.3 and higher). Other samplers released by AKAI include
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#17327916066961608-402: A few crude telephone-based recording devices with no means of amplification, such as the telegraphone , 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
1742-430: A frequency range up to 40 kHz and up to 750 kB of memory that allowed for just under 12 seconds at the best sampling rate. It could store a maximum of 32 samples in memory. The operating system was software based and allowed for upgrades that had to be booted each time the sampler was switched on. The Akai MPC60 Digital Sampler/Drum Machine and MIDI Sequencer (1988) was the first non-rack mounted model released. It
1876-509: A high level of complexity and sophistication. The combined impact with innovations such as the endless loop broadcast cartridge led to significant changes in the pacing and production style of radio program content and advertising. In 1881, it was noted during experiments in transmitting sound from the Paris Opera that it was possible to follow the movement of singers on the stage if earpieces connected to different microphones were held to
2010-585: 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
2144-743: 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. 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. The first device that could record actual sounds as they passed through
2278-574: A maximum sampling rate of 27.7 kHz, a four-octave keyboard and 128 kB of memory. E-mu Emulator II (1984) was designed to bridge the gap between the Fairlight CMI and Synclavier and the Ensoniq Mirage . It featured 8 notes polyphony, 8-bit sampling, 512kb of RAM (1mb in the EII+ though only accessible as two independent 512kb banks), an 8-track sequencer, and analog filtering. With
2412-554: 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
2546-451: A pair of fast D/A and A/D converters, 12,000 (12k) bytes of core memory ( RAM ), backed up by a hard drive of 32k and by tape storage (DecTape). EMS equipment was used to control the world's first digital studio (EMS London (Putney) Studio), and their earliest digital sampling was done on that system during 1971–1972 for Harrison Birtwistle 's " Chronometer " released in 1975. The first commercially available sampling synthesizer
2680-433: A pianist playing a piano note or an organist playing a pipe organ ), a sample could be any sound, including "non-musical" sounds such as a typewriter clacking or a dog barking. A reference center pitch indicates the actual frequency of the recorded note. Samples may also be "looped" by defining points at which a repeated section of the sample starts and ends, allowing a relatively short sample to play endlessly. In some cases,
2814-507: A pitched instrument over several keymaps, the transition from one to another may be too noticeable for realistic imitation of the instrument – the art is to make transitions as smooth as possible. Some phrase samplers are more optimised for triggering single "one-shot" sounds such as drum hits. Each keymap spans only a single key, requiring a large number of zones (61 on a five-octave keyboard), each with its own settings. "Phrase sampling" aims to simplify this, particularly on interfaces such as
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#17327916066962948-472: A resolution of 8 bits per sample, at a rate of 24 kHz, and used two 8-bit Motorola 6800 processors (later upgraded to the more powerful 16/32-bit Motorola 68000 ). It was equipped with two six-octave keyboards, an alphanumeric keyboard, and an interactive video display unit (VDU) where soundwaves could be edited or even drawn from scratch using a light pen . Software allowed for editing, looping, and mixing of sounds which could then be played back via
3082-402: 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
3216-418: A sample over a certain range of keys. This has side-effects that may be desirable in some contexts, such as speeding up or slowing down drum loops. However, the higher and lower-pitched parts of such a keymap may sound unnatural. For example, if a harpsichord is sampled in its lower register and then the samples are moved up to very high pitches, the high notes may not sound natural and authentic. When arranging
3350-455: A second keyboard could be attached via MIDI as an additional organ manual. The Electro 5 allows for a maximum of two sound sources to be used simultaneously in layered or split-keyboard configuration while the Electro 6 allows for a maximum of three sound sources (organ+piano+sample). The original Nord Electro was released in 2001. It contained emulations of a Hammond B3 as well as samples of
3484-519: A single sample has been assigned is often called a "keyzone", and the resultant set of zones is called a keymap . For example, in Fig 1, a keymap has been created with four different samples. Each sample, if pitched, should be associated with a particular center pitch. The first sample (Violin G#2) is distributed across three different notes, G2, G#2, and A2. If the note G#2 is received the sampler will play back
3618-510: A specialist market during the 1950s. EMI (UK) was the first company to release commercial stereophonic tapes. They issued their first Stereosonic tape in 1954. Others quickly followed, under the His Master's Voice (HMV) and Columbia labels. 161 Stereosonic tapes were released, mostly classical music or lyric recordings. RCA imported these tapes into the USA. Although some HMV tapes released in
3752-464: A stereo soundtrack was Walt Disney's Fantasia , released in 1940. The 1941 release of Fantasia used the Fantasound sound system. This system used a separate film for the sound, synchronized with the film carrying the picture. The sound film had four double-width optical soundtracks, three for left, center, and right audio—and a fourth as a "control" track with three recorded tones that controlled
3886-469: 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
4020-429: A variety of techniques from remixing to pseudostereo . 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
4154-476: A wide frequency range and high audio quality are not. 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 ,
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4288-550: A worldwide standard for higher-quality recording on vinyl records. The Ernest Ansermet recording of Igor Stravinsky 's Petrushka was key in the development of full frequency range records and alerting the listening public to high fidelity in 1946. Until the mid-1960s, record companies mixed and released most popular music in monophonic sound. From mid-1960s until the early 1970s, major recordings were commonly released in both mono and stereo. Recordings originally released only in mono have been rerendered and released in stereo using
4422-474: Is amplified and connected to a loudspeaker to produce sound. 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
4556-411: 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
4690-567: Is also the first time a sampler with touch sensitive trigger pads was produced by AKAI, giving birth to the popular MPC series of sampler sequencers. The Akai S950 (1988) was an improved version of the S900, with a maximum sample frequency of 48 kHz and some of the editing features of the contemporary S1000. The Akai S1000 (1988) was possibly the most popular 16-bit 44.1 kHz stereo sampler of its time. It featured 16-voices, up to 32 MB of memory, and 24-bit internal processing, including
4824-530: Is an effect section that emulates popular "stomp box" effect pedals from the '70s and amplifiers including the Leslie rotary speaker cabinet. These can be applied to piano, organ or samples. Reverb and Delay effects are also available. As with other Clavia products, it is distinctive for its red color. Unlike the Clavia Nord Stage , earlier models could only play one instrument at a time, although
4958-417: Is likely to be present. An optically recorded timecode is also commonly included to synchronize CDROMs that contain a DTS soundtrack. This period also saw several other historic developments including the introduction of the first practical magnetic sound recording system, the magnetic wire recorder , which was based on the work of Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen . Magnetic wire recorders were effective, but
5092-422: 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
5226-568: The Chladni patterns produced by sound in stone representations, although this theory has not been conclusively proved. In the 14th century, a mechanical bell-ringer controlled by a rotating cylinder was introduced in Flanders . 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
5360-576: The Groove Sampler concept. These devices are renowned for their ease of use, but a few lack the pitch transposition and keyzone mapping capabilities that most samplers have. Some have limits to rendering loops or sound effects samples that are played back at the same pitch they were recorded. Although these machines are equipped with a wide range of built-in effects, a few lack pitch transposition and keyzone mapping that diminishes their utility significantly. The Roland Groove Sampler line includes
5494-609: The Korg M1 , Roland U-110 , Yamaha's SY series, and the Kawai K series of instruments. Limiting factors at the time were the cost of physical memory ( RAM ) and the limitations of external data storage devices, and this approach made best use of the tiny amount of memory available to the design engineers. The E-mu SP-1200 percussion sampler, upon its release in August 1987, popularized the use of digital samplers within hip hop music in
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5628-461: The Mellotron library and support for the entire Nord Sample Library. It was initially released only in 61- and 73-key semi-weighted versions. In 2011, the Nord Electro 3 HP (Hammer Portable) was released, which replaces the organ-style semi-weighted "waterfall" keys of the original models with a light-weight 73-key hammer-action keyboard. In 2012, the Nord Electro 4D was released, which replaces
5762-536: The compact disc (CD) in 1982 brought significant improvements in the quality and durability of recordings. The CD initiated another massive wave of change in the consumer music industry, with vinyl records effectively relegated to a small niche market by the mid-1990s. The record industry fiercely resisted the introduction of digital systems, fearing wholesale piracy on a medium able to produce perfect copies of original released recordings. The most recent and revolutionary developments have been in digital recording, with
5896-452: The graphic equalizer , which could be connected together to create a complete home sound system. These developments were rapidly taken up by major Japanese electronics companies, which soon flooded the world market with relatively affordable, high-quality transistorized audio components. By the 1980s, corporations like Sony had become world leaders in the music recording and playback industry. The advent of digital sound recording and later
6030-459: The 16 pads on the Akai MPC series: the fact that each pad is actually a note is hidden from the user. The sampling engine does not re-pitch samples, it only plays them back. The user interface is simplified. Phrase samplers often have a groovebox format, which makes them lightweight, easy to operate and light to carry. Samplers can be classified by several specifications; Computer Music Inc.
6164-406: The 1920s, Phonofilm and other early motion picture sound systems employed optical recording technology, in which the audio signal was graphically recorded on photographic film. The amplitude variations comprising the signal were used to modulate a light source which was imaged onto the moving film through a narrow slit, allowing the signal to be photographed as variations in the density or width of
6298-625: The 1980s, digital samplers using pulse-code modulation (PCM) as on the forerunners in the 1970s mentioned above, have been used. The first PCM digital sampler for musical production in Japan may be Toshiba 's LMD-649 , created in 1981 by engineer Kenji Murata for Japanese electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra , who used it for extensive sampling and looping in their 1981 album Technodelic . The LMD-649 played and recorded PCM samples at 12-bit audio depth and 50 kHz sampling rate , stored in 128 KB of dynamic RAM . The LMD-649
6432-549: 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
6566-578: The 1980s, users on Home computers invented Trackers . Sequencers are software samplers as the real-time resampling is a required capability for the Tracker concept. Since the 1980s, Trackers were able to perform 4-channel resampling in realtime under usage of the Paula Chip on the Amiga . Since the early 1990s Trackers performed on PCs multi-track resampling in realtime as pure software solution. This
6700-543: The Fairlight CMI include Peter Gabriel , Herbie Hancock , Trevor Horn , Art of Noise , Yello , Pet Shop Boys , Jean Michel Jarre , Duran Duran and Kate Bush . Horn, considered the "Man who invented the eighties", first used his well-known sampling techniques on the album Adventures in Modern Recording , the second studio album released under the name of his project The Buggles . Saying that he
6834-560: The Japanese/Singaporean Akai Corporation to create samplers similar to the ones created at Linn's own company, Linn Electronics . With this came the first in a series of affordable samplers, the S612, a 12 bit digital sampler module. The S612 was superseded in 1986 by the S900. The Akai S900 (1986) was the first truly affordable digital sampler. It was 8-note polyphonic and featured 12-bit sampling with
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#17327916066966968-788: The Melodian captured all frequency modulation effects, including those produced through the ARP's touch ribbon control. It also could trigger off the ARPs keyboard, thus functioning somewhat as a hybrid of sampler and analog synthesizer and making the most of the technology available at the time. The Synclavier System was an early digital synthesizer and sampler, manufactured by New England Digital. First released in 1977, it proved to be highly influential among both music producers and electronic musicians, due to its versatility, its cutting-edge technology and distinctive sound. Synclavier Systems were expensive –
7102-483: 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
7236-407: The Nord Electro 5 on their website: two 5D models, one with 61 (5D 61) and the other with 73 keys (5D 73), and a 5 HP with 73 hammer-action keys. On January 19, 2018, Clavia announced the Nord Electro 6. As with the previous generation, there are two models with physical drawbars and waterfall keys (Electro 6D 61 and 6D 73) and one with a 73-note hammer-action keybed (Electro 6 HP). This model has for
7370-466: The S01, S20, S700, S2000, S2800, S3000, S3000XL, S3200, S5000, S6000, MPC 500, MPC1000, MPC2000, MPC2000XL, MPC2500, MPC3000, MPC3000XL, MPC3000LE, MPC4000, MPC5000, Z4 and Z8. Roland Corporation manufactured the S series. These were true samplers that provide all of the features described above, including sampling, sample editing, pitch transposition, and keyzone mapping: More recently, Roland introduced
7504-597: The USA cost up to $ 15, two-track stereophonic tapes were more successful in America during the second half of the 1950s. The history of stereo recording changed after the late 1957 introduction of the Westrex stereo phonograph disc , which used the groove format developed earlier by Blumlein. Decca Records in England came out with FFRR (Full Frequency Range Recording) in the 1940s, which became internationally accepted as
7638-544: The Violin G#2 sample at its original pitch. If the note received is G2 the sampler will shift the sample down a semitone while the note A2 will play it back a semitone tone higher. If the next note (Bb2) is input the sampler will select the Violin B2 sample, playing it a semitone lower than its center pitch of B2. In general, samplers can play back any kind of recorded audio. Most samplers offer editing tools that allow
7772-496: The addition of the hard disk option, the Emulator II was comparable to samplers released 5 years later. E-mu SP-12 (1986) was a forerunner of E-mu SP-1200 . E-mu Emulator III (1987) was a 16-bit stereo digital sampler with 16-note polyphony, 44.1 kHz maximum sample rate and had up to 8 MB of memory. It featured a 16 channel sequencer, SMPTE and a 40 MB hard disk. E-mu SP-1200 (1987) was, and still is, one of
7906-500: 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
8040-407: 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. They consist of sheets of paper with sound-wave-modulated white lines created by a vibrating stylus that cut through
8174-494: The amount of data that can be stored on a single medium, such as Super Audio CD , DVD-A , Blu-ray Disc , and HD DVD became available, longer programs of higher quality fit onto a single disc. Sound files are readily downloaded from the Internet and other sources, and copied onto computers and digital audio players. Digital audio technology is now used in all areas of audio, from casual use of music files of moderate quality to
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#17327916066968308-417: 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
8442-555: 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
8576-454: 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
8710-407: 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
8844-447: 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. A process for mass-producing duplicate wax cylinders by molding instead of engraving them was put into effect in 1901. The development of mass-production techniques enabled cylinder recordings to become a major new consumer item in industrial countries and
8978-505: The controversy came to focus on concern for the perception of moving image and sound. There are individual and cultural preferences for either method. While approaches and opinions vary, some emphasize sound as paramount, others focus on technology preferences as the deciding factor. Analog fans might embrace limitations as strengths of the medium inherent in the compositional, editing, mixing, and listening phases. Digital advocates boast flexibility in similar processes. This debate fosters
9112-456: 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. The replacement of the relatively fragile vacuum tube by the smaller, rugged and efficient transistor also accelerated
9246-538: The cumbersome disc-to-disc editing procedures previously in some limited use, together with tape's consistently high audio quality finally convinced radio networks to routinely prerecord their entertainment programming, most of which had formerly been broadcast live. Also, for the first time, broadcasters, regulators and other interested parties were able to undertake comprehensive audio logging of each day's radio broadcasts. Innovations like multitracking and tape echo allowed radio programs and advertisements to be produced to
9380-407: The cylinder was the main consumer format from the late 1880s until around 1910. The next major technical development was the invention of the gramophone record , generally credited to Emile Berliner and patented in 1887, though others had demonstrated similar disk apparatus earlier, most notably Alexander Graham Bell in 1881. Discs were easier to manufacture, transport and store, and they had
9514-572: 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. 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
9648-490: The development of various uncompressed and compressed digital audio file formats , processors capable and fast enough to convert the digital data to sound in real time , and inexpensive mass storage . This generated new types of portable digital audio players . The minidisc player, using ATRAC compression on small, re-writeable discs was introduced in the 1990s, but became obsolescent as solid-state non-volatile flash memory dropped in price. As technologies that increase
9782-445: The digital modelling of several types of organs. Unlike many other keyboards that feature tonewheel organ emulation, the drawbars on some models of the Nord Electro are represented by LED bar graphs and up/down buttons instead of the traditional mechanical drawbars. The Electro 3 added a sample player which offered the ability to play a wider range of sounds, notably including those from the Mellotron and Chamberlin libraries. There
9916-461: The digital organ drawbars of prior models with physical drawbar sliders and has updated Hammond B3 emulation. It has a 61-key organ-style semi-weighted "waterfall" keyboard. Later in 2012, the Nord Electro 4 HP and 4 SW were released. They have the same features as the Electro 4D, except with the digital drawbars of the Electro 3 and earlier, increased sample memory, and 73-key keyboards like the Electro 3 HP and SW. On January 16, 2015, Clavia announced
10050-507: 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." Carvings in the Rosslyn Chapel from the 1560s may represent an early attempt to record
10184-444: 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
10318-483: The first time multi-timbrality (3 parts) and a "Dual Organ" mode to allow the player quick access to split keyboard setups to emulate a dual-manual organ on a single-manual instrument. Sampler (musical instrument) A sampler is an electronic musical instrument that records and plays back samples (portions of sound recordings ). Samples may comprise elements such as rhythm, melody, speech, sound effects or longer portions of music. The mid-20th century saw
10452-686: The following: Being a division of the Roland Corporation, Boss also contributed to the Groove Sampler/Groove Box concept with several samplers. Most older samplers use SCSI as the protocol for getting sample data in and out of the machine. SCSI interfaces were either standard on the sampler or offered as an option. SCSI provides the ability to move large quantities of data in and out of a sampler in reasonable times. Hard drives, CD-ROM drives, Zip drives and removable cartridge drives such as Syquest and Iomega Jaz drives are
10586-402: The high recording speeds required, they used enormous reels about one meter in diameter, and the thin tape frequently broke, sending jagged lengths of razor steel flying around the studio. Magnetic tape recording uses an amplified electrical audio signal to generate analogous variations of the magnetic field produced by a tape head , which impresses corresponding variations of magnetization on
10720-511: The highest price ever paid for one was about $ 500,000, although average systems were closer to about $ 200,000 – $ 300,000. Although this made it inaccessible for most musicians, it found widespread use among producers and professional recording studios, and it competed in this market with other high-end production systems, such as the Fairlight CMI . Though scarce, the Synclavier remains in use in many studios to this day. Fairlight Instruments
10854-520: The information can be quickly accessed. A single sample may be pitch-shifted to different pitches to produce musical scales and chords . Often samplers offer filters , effects units , modulation via low frequency oscillation and other synthesizer-like processes that allow the original sound to be modified in many different ways. Most samplers have Multitimbrality capabilities – they can play back different sounds simultaneously. Many are also polyphonic – they are able to play more than one note at
10988-590: The introduction of keyboard instruments that played sounds recorded on tape, such as the Mellotron . As technology improved, cheaper standalone samplers with more memory emerged, such as the E-mu Emulator , Akai S950 and Akai MPC . Samples may be loaded or recorded by the user or by a manufacturer. The samples can be played back by means of the sampler program itself, a MIDI keyboard , sequencer or another triggering device (e.g., electronic drums ). Because these samples are usually stored in digital memory,
11122-552: The keyboard or the software-based sequencer. It retailed for around US$ 25,000. Fairlight later released the Series IIx, which increased the sampling rate to 32 kHz and was the first to feature basic MIDI functionality. In 1985, the Series III was released with two significant upgrades: bit rate and sampling rate were increased to CD quality (16 bit/44.1 kHz) and SMPTE time code was now supported. Notable users of
11256-513: The late 1980s. Akai pioneered many processing techniques, such as crossfade looping and "time stretch" to shorten or lengthen samples without affecting pitch and vice versa. The Akai MPC60 , released in 1988, went on to become the most influential sampler in hip hop music. That same year, the Ensoniq EPS – the successor to the Mirage – was launched and was the first sampling keyboard which
11390-540: 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
11524-475: 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
11658-651: The most demanding professional applications. New applications such as internet radio and podcasting have appeared. Technological developments in recording, editing, and consuming have transformed the record , movie and television industries in recent decades. Audio editing became practicable with the invention of magnetic tape recording , but technologies like MIDI , sound synthesis and digital audio workstations allow greater control and efficiency for composers and artists. Digital audio techniques and mass storage have reduced recording costs such that high-quality recordings can be produced in small studios. Today,
11792-429: The most highly regarded samplers for use in hip-hop related production. Its 12-bit sampling engine gave a desirable warmth to instruments and a gritty punch to drums. It featured 10 seconds of sample time spread across four 2.5-second sections. E-mu Emax , sold between 1985 & 1995, and aimed at the lower end of the market. E-mu ESI-32 (1994) was a stripped down, far cheaper, and simplified EIIIx, and could use
11926-411: The most popular SCSI devices used with samplers. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, with hard drives being the fastest devices. Modern (after 2000) samplers use solid-state memory cards (such as compact Flash or SmartMedia) for sample storage and transfer. In the 1990s and 2000s, the increases in computer power and memory capacity have made it possible to develop software applications that provide
12060-402: The moving tape. In playback mode, the signal path is reversed, the tape head acting as a miniature electric generator as the varyingly magnetized tape passes over it. The original solid steel ribbon was replaced by a much more practical coated paper tape, but acetate soon replaced paper as the standard tape base. Acetate has fairly low tensile strength and if very thin it will snap easily, so it
12194-599: 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 discs with strongly recorded high frequencies. In
12328-488: The next two years, Blumlein developed stereo microphones and a stereo disc-cutting head, and recorded a number of short films with stereo soundtracks. In the 1930s, experiments with magnetic tape enabled the development of the first practical commercial sound systems that could record and reproduce high-fidelity stereophonic sound . The experiments with stereo during the 1930s and 1940s were hampered by problems with synchronization. A major breakthrough in practical stereo sound
12462-405: 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
12596-422: The original Electro to be updated to Electro 2 functionality through a software update. Like the original Electro, the Electro 2 was also released in 61- and 73-key versions as well as a rack version. In 2009, the Nord Electro 3 was released. It expanded the functionality of the Nord Electro 2 with Farfisa and Vox organ emulations as well as improved B3 emulation and more effects. It also includes samples from
12730-416: The paleophone. 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. The first practical sound recording and reproduction device was the mechanical phonograph cylinder , invented by Thomas Edison in 1877 and patented in 1878. The invention soon spread across the globe and over the next two decades
12864-665: The playback volume of the three audio channels. Because of the complex equipment this system required, Disney exhibited the movie as a roadshow, and only in the United States. Regular releases of the movie used standard mono optical 35 mm stock until 1956, when Disney released the film with a stereo soundtrack that used the Cinemascope four-track magnetic sound system. German audio engineers working on magnetic tape developed stereo recording by 1941. Of 250 stereophonic recordings made during WW2, only three survive: Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto with Walter Gieseking and Arthur Rother,
12998-609: The price down to under $ 10,000 but it was not until the mid-1980s that genuinely affordable keyboard samplers began to hit the market with the Ensoniq Mirage in 1985 and the E-mu Emax the following year, which had a sub-$ 2000 price point. The Korg DSS-1 and Roland's S-Series followed shortly afterwards. During the 1980s, hybrid synthesizers began to utilize short samples (such as the attack phase of an instrument) along with digital synthesis to create more realistic imitations of instruments than had previously been possible. Examples are
13132-808: The process of making a recording is separated into tracking, mixing and mastering . Multitrack recording makes it possible to capture signals from several microphones, or from different takes to tape, disc or mass storage allowing previously unavailable flexibility in the mixing and mastering stages. There are many different digital audio recording and processing programs running under several computer operating systems for all purposes, ranging from casual users and serious amateurs working on small projects to professional sound engineers who are recording albums, film scores and doing sound design for video games . Digital dictation software for recording and transcribing speech has different requirements; intelligibility and flexible playback facilities are priorities, while
13266-549: 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
13400-595: The range of the instrument was limited to three octaves at the most. To change sounds a new set of tapes had to be installed in the instrument. The emergence of the digital sampler made sampling far more practical. The earliest digital sampling was done on the EMS Musys system, developed by Peter Grogono (software), David Cockerell (hardware and interfacing) and Peter Zinovieff (system design and operation) at their London (Putney) Studio c. 1969. The system ran on two mini-computers, Digital Equipment PDP-8 's. These had
13534-590: The recording industry. Tape made possible the first sound recordings totally created by electronic means, opening the way for the bold sonic experiments of the Musique Concrète school and avant-garde composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen , which in turn led to the innovative pop music recordings of artists such as the Beatles and the Beach Boys . The ease and accuracy of tape editing, as compared to
13668-540: 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
13802-646: The rights to the Blattnerphone, and newly developed Marconi-Stille recorders were installed in the BBC's Maida Vale Studios in March 1935. The tape used in Blattnerphones and Marconi-Stille recorders was the same material used to make razor blades, and not surprisingly the fearsome Marconi-Stille recorders were considered so dangerous that technicians had to operate them from another room for safety. Because of
13936-466: The sale of consumer high-fidelity sound systems from the 1960s onward. In the 1950s, most record players were monophonic and had relatively low sound quality. Few consumers could afford high-quality stereophonic sound systems. In the 1960s, American manufacturers introduced a new generation of modular hi-fi components — separate turntables, pre-amplifiers, amplifiers, both combined as integrated amplifiers, tape recorders, and other ancillary equipment like
14070-451: The same capabilities as hardware-based units. These are typically produced as plug-in instruments – for example, using the VST system. Some such samplers provide relatively simple sample playback facilities, requiring the user to turn to other software for such tasks as sample editing, sample recording, and DSP effects, while others provide features beyond those offered by rack-mounted units. In
14204-633: The same samples. The unit could accommodate up to 32 MB RAM, 32 note polyphony and sounds could be routed internally to one of four polyphonic outputs. Via optional SCSI interface, the ESI-32 could access external CD-ROM, Zip-100 , and hard drives. Akai entered the electronic musical instrument world in 1984 when Roger Linn , the creator of the Linn LM-1 , the Linn 9000 , and the LinnDrum , partnered with
14338-505: The same tape many times, sounds could be duplicated from tape to tape with only minor loss of quality, and recordings could now be very precisely edited by physically cutting the tape and rejoining it. Within a few years of the introduction of the first commercial tape recorder—the Ampex 200 model, launched in 1948—American musician-inventor Les Paul had invented the first multitrack tape recorder , ushering in another technical revolution in
14472-514: The same time, sound recordings enabled music lovers outside the West to hear the most famous North American and European groups and singers. As digital recording developed, so did a controversy commonly known as the analog versus digital controversy. Audio professionals, audiophiles, consumers, musicians alike contributed to the debate based on their interaction with the media and the preferences for analog or digital processes. Scholarly discourse on
14606-410: The same time. Prior to computer memory-based samplers, musicians used tape replay keyboards, which store recordings on analog tape. When a key is pressed the tape head contacts the moving tape and plays a sound. The Mellotron was the most notable model, used by a number of groups in the late 1960s and the 1970s, but such systems were expensive and heavy due to the multiple tape mechanisms involved, and
14740-566: The sound quality was poor, so between the wars, they were primarily used for voice recording and marketed as business dictating machines. In 1924, a German engineer, Kurt Stille, improved the Telegraphone with an electronic amplifier. The following year, Ludwig Blattner began work that eventually produced the Blattnerphone, which used steel tape instead of wire. The BBC started using Blattnerphones in 1930 to record radio programs. In 1933, radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi 's company purchased
14874-466: The sound. Instruments may have multiple layers of keymaps to play more than one sample at the same time and each keymap may have a different set of parameters so that the incoming note-events affect each layer differently. For example, two layers may have a different sensitivity to the velocity of the incoming note, altering the resulting timbre according to how hard the note is played. At this level, there are two basic approaches to sampler organization. In
15008-479: 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
15142-495: The two ears. This discovery was commercialized in 1890 with the Théâtrophone system, which operated for over forty years until 1932. In 1931, Alan Blumlein , a British electronics engineer working for EMI , designed a way to make the sound of an actor in a film follow his movement across the screen. In December 1931, he submitted a patent application including the idea, and in 1933 this became UK patent number 394,325 . Over
15276-615: 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
15410-450: 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
15544-566: 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. 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
15678-425: The user to modify and process the audio and apply a wide range of effects . This makes the sampler a powerful and versatile musical tool. A sampler is organized into a hierarchy of progressively more complicated data structures. At the bottom lie samples , individual recordings of any sound, recorded at a particular sample rate and resolution. While a common sound to sample is a musical instrument being played (e.g.,
15812-461: Was E-mu Systems' initial foray into sampling, and saved the company from financial disaster after the complete failure of the Audity due to a price tag of $ 70,000. The name 'Emulator' came as the result of leafing through a thesaurus and matched the name of the company perfectly. The Emulator came in 2-, 4-, and 8-note polyphonic versions, the 2-note being dropped due to limited interest, and featured
15946-604: Was "quite fascinated by Fairlight brass and all of those kind of things that Geoffrey and I had started messing around with before he went off to join Asia", the sampling techniques on Adventures would later be used for records Horn produced like Slave to the Rhythm by Grace Jones , Art of Noise 's The Seduction of Claude Debussy and Frankie Goes To Hollywood 's Welcome to the Pleasuredome . E-mu Emulator (1981)
16080-549: 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. 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
16214-414: 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. Sound recording began as a purely mechanical process. Except for
16348-548: Was also used by other Japanese synthpop artists in the early 1980s, including Chiemi Manabe and Logic System . Usually a sampler is controlled by an attached music keyboard or other external MIDI controller or source. Each note-message received by the sampler accesses a particular sample. Often multiple samples are arranged across the keyboard, each assigned to a note or group of notes. Keyboard tracking allows samples to be shifted in pitch by an appropriate amount, typically in semitones and tones. Each group of notes to which
16482-609: Was designed specifically for live performance rather being a purely studio based tool as most samplers had been hitherto. The 2010s-era music workstation usually uses sampling, whether simple playback or complex editing that matches all but the most advanced dedicated samplers, and also includes features such as a sequencer . Samplers, together with traditional Foley artists , are the mainstay of modern sound effects production. Using digital techniques various effects can be pitch-shifted and otherwise altered in ways that would have required many hours when done with tape. In Japan, since
16616-410: Was first used by Stevie Wonder on his album Stevie Wonder's Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants" (1979). The Melodian was a monophonic synthesizer with 12-bit analog-to-digital sampling at rates up to 22 kHz. It was designed to be compatible with analog synthesizers and had a feature allowing it to synchronize to the pitch of an analog synthesizer, such as an ARP 2600 . This meant that
16750-507: Was further improved just after World War II by American audio engineer John T. Mullin with backing from Bing Crosby Enterprises. Mullin's pioneering recorders were modifications of captured German recorders. In the late 1940s, the Ampex company produced the first tape recorders commercially available in the US. Magnetic tape brought about sweeping changes in both radio and the recording industry. Sound could be recorded, erased and re-recorded on
16884-530: Was in turn eventually superseded by polyester. This technology, the basis for almost all commercial recording from the 1950s to the 1980s, was developed in the 1930s by German audio engineers who also rediscovered the principle of AC biasing (first used in the 1920s for wire recorders ), which dramatically improved the frequency response of tape recordings. The K1 Magnetophon was the first practical tape recorder, developed by AEG in Germany in 1935. The technology
17018-411: 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. 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
17152-448: Was made by Bell Laboratories , who in 1937 demonstrated a practical system of two-channel stereo, using dual optical sound tracks on film. Major movie studios quickly developed three-track and four-track sound systems, and the first stereo sound recording for a commercial film was made by Judy Garland for the MGM movie Listen, Darling in 1938. The first commercially released movie with
17286-714: Was possible under the usage of highly optimized assembly code , an early example is the InertiaPlayer released in 1993. A recent PC Tracker with good sampler capabilities is for instance the Renoise Tracker. Sound recording 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
17420-479: 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
17554-498: Was started in New Jersey United States in 1972 by Harry Mendell and Dan Coren. The company was established to develop and market musical instruments based on computer software. The Melodian, developed in 1976, was based on Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-8 computer. It included hand-wired digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital conversion functions, as well as tracking anti-aliasing filters . The Melodian
17688-579: Was started in Sydney, in 1975 by Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie . The company was originally established as a manufacturer and retailer of video special effects equipment. The Fairlight CMI or Computer Music Instrument, released in 1979, started life as the Qasar M8. The M8 was handwired and legend has it that it took two hours to boot up. The CMI was the first commercially available polyphonic digital sampling instrument. The original Fairlight CMI sampled using
17822-618: Was the Computer Music Melodian by Harry Mendell (1976), while the first polyphonic digital sampling synthesizer was the Australian-produced Fairlight CMI , first available in 1979. These early sampling synthesizers used wavetable sample-based synthesis . Sampling keyboards were notable for their high price which was out of reach for the majority of working musicians – with the early Fairlight starting at $ 30,000. The E-mu Emulator brought
17956-410: 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. Telephone industry giant Western Electric had research laboratories with material and human resources that no record company or independent inventor could match. They had the best microphone,
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