Recording, as the name implies, is to record the recording process on the medium. With the development of human science and technology, recording methods range from mechanical recording, electro-acoustic recording, magnetic tape recording to digital optical recording and so on.
The earliest recording instrument in the era of cylinder phonograph was the acoustic vibrometer invented by French scientist Scott in 1857. It is an instrument that records the sound wave "image" by using the vibration generated by sound waves. Although the acoustic vibration recorder can't display the sound itself, it makes human beings realize the conversion of sound signals for the first time, and it also blows the horn for the invention of the phonograph, a real recording device.
1877, American inventor and businessman Thomas Edison invented the first phonograph in human history. This "talking machine" caused a sensation in the world and officially opened the history of human recording. Edison rolled a piece of tin foil on a metal cylinder with a spiral groove. One end of the short needle rubs the foil, and the other end is connected to the receiver. When the crank shakes the metal cylinder and rotates, the short needle is vibrated by the undulating sound, and different grooves are carved on the tin foil. When the short needle vibrates repeatedly along the groove, it will emit the original sound.
This machine is called "/kloc-the miracle of the 9th century", and Edison is famous for it. However, the newly born phonograph has a short recording time, a low voice and ambiguity. Edison continued his research and finally developed the second generation phonograph. On the microphone of the second generation phonograph, Edison added a trumpet-shaped sound tube as a speaker; Then he replaced the tin foil paper with a wax tube, so that the wax tube could be reused; At the same time, a drive structure is installed in the watch case, and the time can be automatically recorded and played as long as each spring is tightened. The cylinder phonograph has been improved, and its sound is clear and realistic, and it has also begun to enter the stage of commercial application.
However, the recording of the early cylinder phonograph was rarely circulated, mainly because the technical problems of copying and reproduction have not been solved. At that time, if you wanted to record the music played by a band, even if you used the 10 loudspeaker at the same time, the band patiently played the same song 20 times and only got 200 copies. Because of the high production cost, it is difficult to popularize.
In the phonograph era of 189 1, German engineer Berliner successfully developed a reproduction method of phonograph with gold-plated copper mold as the master mold and shellac as the casting reproduction raw material, which officially kicked off the replacement of cylinder phonograph by phonograph. The phonograph is still powered by manual winding. It is also based on the principle that the needle sounds through the groove of the record. Only the original cylinder rotation was replaced by the disk rotation. At the beginning of the birth of records, the phonograph was greatly promoted because of its simple reproduction and mass production.
However, due to technical limitations, the recording speed is very fast, reaching 78 revolutions per minute, which directly leads to less than 3 minutes of recording on each side. So American pop music in the early 20th century was very short. Seventy-eight record companies dominated the record industry for decades until World War II, when India, the main source of shellac, was blocked. At that time, the record company asked buyers to hand in a certain number of old records in exchange for new ones. This policy led to the disappearance of many precious records on 78r records.
1948 After World War II, Gedemark, the chief engineer of Columbia Records Company, invented a brand-new record. Mark uses diamonds as the stylus and vinyl plastic as the recording material, which reduces the recording speed to 33.3rpm and increases the groove density, so that a 12 inch record can play music for more than 20 minutes on each side. This is what people often call a "compact record", also known as a "long record". The birth of CD greatly promoted the prosperity of pop music market and brought the development of phonograph into a new glorious period.
In the era of the popularity of the phonograph, the recording form has also undergone revolutionary changes. Before the 1920s, music was recorded in a purely "acoustic" or "mechanical" way, which forced musicians to squeeze painfully into the speakers of the recording studio when recording music, and the recorded sound effect was poor. With the development of broadcasting and wireless telegraph technology, electroacoustic recording technology is emerging. 1924, Bell Laboratories successfully carried out electroacoustic recording experiments, and the history of human records opened the electrification era. Electroacoustic recording is to convert sound waves into electrical signals, and then record them through these electrical signals.
Electro-acoustic recording has two advantages: first, electro-acoustic recording can record and restore sound more truly. Especially after Decca broadband technology was popularized in 1945, the upper limit of recording frequency reached 14000Hz, which was close to the human ear limit, and the recording effect was greatly improved, especially the timbre of strings was more delicate and realistic. Secondly, electroacoustic recording gave birth to microphone and other sound reinforcement equipment. Microphones rely on the sensitive response of capacitors to the thickness of plates to achieve sound reinforcement effect. The appearance of microphone allows musicians to play freely in a more relaxed environment. It can be said that the appearance of electroacoustic recording is a qualitative leap in the development of phonograph.
In fact, as early as the early 20th century, Danish scientist Paulson discovered that magnetized steel wire can store sound signals, but the heavy and inconvenient steel wire affected the popularity of this recording method. In 1930s, German scientist Freye Ma painted magnetic iron powder on paper tape and plastic tape, which is the embryonic form of modern magnetic tape.
Magnetic tape is a kind of magnetic tape material with magnetic layer, which is usually formed by plating a layer of granular magnetic material or evaporating a layer of magnetic oxide on the basis of plastic film tape. The principle of magnetic tape recording also starts from the electro-acoustic recording mechanism. Firstly, the energy of sound vibration is converted into an electrical signal whose intensity changes with the sound through the sensor, and then the recording head changes its coil characteristics according to the electrical signal whose intensity changes, magnetizing the magnetic substance on the magnetic tape, and the characteristics of the magnetized substance are different according to the different electrical signals, thus recording the sound signal. During World War II, German radio stations began to use tape recorders extensively, but at this time tapes were only used to record and play the speeches of military generals.
After the war, after the improvement in the United States, tape recording began to be associated with music. Compared with records, magnetic tape has many advantages: first, the recording time of magnetic tape is more unlimited; Secondly, tape recording is easy to edit, and unnecessary fragments can be easily cut off. The development of this post-editing and modifying technology has a great influence on recording technology and performance practice. Finally, tape recording makes it possible to record multiple tracks at the same time, that is, the sounds that can be recorded by multiple groups of microphones are stored in different independent tracks, and then mixed after recording, and the most direct products of this multi-track recording method are stereo recording and multi-channel recording.
But the life of magnetic tape is much worse than that of phonograph records. Generally, when the magnetic tape is stored for about 10 years, the internal magnetic signal will be obviously weakened. However, the records of the 1920s and 1930s still exist today, and the sound quality is still good. The gap between them is obvious. The advantage of life alone has not affected the dominant position of tape in the dense records.
1963, Philips of the Netherlands developed a cassette tape recorder. Because the cassette tape has the advantages of portability, durability and strong interchangeability, the product has been rapidly promoted and developed as soon as it is put on the market. By the 1970s, cassette tapes, as a cheap and convenient music carrier, had become popular all over the world.
Magnetic tape is a kind of magnetic tape material with magnetic layer, which is usually made by plating a layer of granular magnetic material or evaporating a layer of magnetic oxide on the plastic film tape substrate. The principle of magnetic tape recording also starts from the mechanism of electroacoustic recording. First, the energy of acoustic vibration is converted into an electrical signal varying with the sound intensity through a sensor. Then, the recording head changes its coil characteristics according to the electric signal, magnetizes the magnetic material on the tape, and the magnetized material has different characteristics according to different electric signals, thus recording the number of sound signals.
During World War II, German radio stations began to use tape recorders, but tapes were only used to record and play the speeches of military generals. After the war, with the progress of Americans, recording began to merge with music. Compared with recording, magnetic tape has many advantages: first, the recording time of magnetic tape is more unlimited; Secondly, tape recording is easy to edit, and unnecessary fragments can be easily cut off. The development of post-editing and modification technology has a great influence on recording technology and performance practice; Finally, tape brings the possibility of recording multiple tracks at the same time, that is, the sounds recorded by multiple groups of microphones can be stored in different independent tracks and then mixed after recording.
The direct product of this multi-channel recording method is stereo recording and multi-channel recording. However, the life of magnetic tape is much worse than that of phonograph records. After the magnetic tape is stored for about 10 years, the magnetic signal will be obviously weakened. However, there are still some records in the 1920s and 1930s, and the sound quality is still very good. The gap between the two is obvious. The advantage of long life alone does not affect the dominant position of CD burning.
1963, Philips of the Netherlands developed a cassette tape recorder. Because the cassette tape has the advantages of portability, durability and strong interchangeability, the product has been rapidly promoted and developed as soon as it is listed. In 1970s, cassette tapes became popular all over the world as a cheap and convenient music carrier.
1979 After the birth of Philips CD, the popularity of Philips CD was demonstrated in the world's first high-density CD storage system. High-density optical disc is an optical storage medium different from magnetic carrier. It records information through small spiral pits on the disk.
The recording principle of CD is: firstly, the external sound signal is compressed into a pulse signal, and the laser beam emission is controlled according to the law of the pulse signal. When the optical system focuses on the original disc coated with photoresist, the original disc moves under the drive of the spindle motor, and the laser beam forms a series of pits on the information track of the optical disc. The length and interval of these pits correspond to control pulses, that is, they contain sound information to be recorded. When playing optical disc information, the information is extracted by detecting the reflected light beam of the optical disc pit irradiated by the laser head.
The introduction of digital technology in CD burning can effectively avoid the interference of signal and noise, and the stored audio information is clean and undistorted. It can be said that the appearance of CD triggered a technological revolution in the music industry. Its excellent sound quality and wear resistance mark the beginning of the digital music era.
In the 1980s, with the continuous upgrading of digital carriers such as CD, MD and DVD, not only the sound quality has made a new leap, but also the storage capacity has become larger and larger, but the volume has become smaller and smaller. For example, the first CD born in 1979, with a diameter of 12 cm, can store 74 minutes of high-definition audio signals, which is close to the capacity of ordinary tapes; In 1990s, Philips developed and launched a DVD with a capacity of 4.7GB, which can store nearly 1 0,000 popular songs. 1986, the sales volume of CD players exceeded that of tape recorders for the first time; 1988, the sales volume of optical drives surpassed that of tape drives for the first time. 2 1 century, the tape recorder was finally submerged in the wave of scientific and technological innovation and was remembered by people.
In the era of digital information cloud, however, optical discs have developed vigorously for more than 20 years. Since 2005, the music sales of CD media have fallen sharply. This is due to the rapid development of Internet technology in the late 20th century and early 20th century. At the same time, due to the continuous improvement of personal computer performance, increasing storage capacity, and the popularity of various recording software and related hardware equipment, music production institutions began to develop towards recording studios and personalization. Many musicians, musicians and music lovers can record high-quality records in the piano room of their own homes or classrooms at any time for personal reference, mutual communication and online demand, and even send them to record companies for official publication.
In today's digital age, in addition to smart phones, the most professional and common recording equipment is a digital recording pen called a recording pen. Shaped like a pen or a small box, it is easy to carry. At the same time, it also has laser pen and MP3 related functions. The main body of the stylus is memory. Because of the use of flash memory and VLSI core system, the whole product is small and light. The recording principle of the pen is to sample and encode the analog signal through the digital-to-analog converter, convert the analog signal into a digital signal, and then compress and store it. Even if this digital signal is copied many times, its sound information will not be destroyed and can remain unchanged.
Now with all kinds of mobile applications, our mobile phones and tablets can record their songs and conversations anytime and anywhere and share them with friends immediately. Recording technology is no longer just a patented device, but a part of multimedia technology. Gramophone, record, tape, CD Today's most advanced technology may be forgotten in a few years.