History and Technology
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Why Music Sales are Down
There’s a good reason why you might not enjoy listening to music as much as you used to: It’s gotten too loud. All music has “dynamic range,” variations in volume between the loud parts and the soft parts. People sing and play at different volumes. Individual notes have an initialRead More…
Vinyl as New Media
Historians often find themselves going back and back and back. Many a recovering graduate student can relate: a story that seemed to begin at one moment in time inevitably has roots that branch and stretch ever deeper into the past. A dissertation on consumer credit in the 1930s somehow becomesRead More…
It’s All in the Mix . . . and in the Master
That vintage vinyl record you place on your turntable is the result of creative and technical choices made along the way from song to disc. By the late 1960s, record making had become a lengthy process involving multi-track recording, mixing, and mastering. In the following selection from Chasing Sound: Technology,Read More…
The History of Vinyl
In 1930, RCA Victor launched the first commercially-available vinyl long-playing record, marketed as “Program Transcription” discs. These revolutionary discs were designed for playback at 33⅓ rpm and pressed on a 12″ diameter flexible plastic disc. In Roland Gelatt’s book The Fabulous Phonograph, the author notes that RCA Victor’s early introductionRead More…