subject: Buy The Best Recording Equipment, Know The Facts. [print this page] Sound recording equipment, music studio equipment, audio recording equipment, recording equipment and reproduction is an electrical or mechanical inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording equipment technology are analogue audio recording equipment and digital recording. Acoustic analogue recording is achieved by a small microphone diaphragm that can detect changes in atmospheric pressure (acoustic sound waves) and record them as a graphic representation of the sound waves on a medium such as a photo magnetic (in which a stylus senses grooves on a record). In magnetic tape recording, the sound waves vibrate the microphone diaphragm and are converted into a varying electric current, which is then converted to a varying magnetic field by an electromagnetic, which makes a representation of the sound as magnetized areas on a plastic tape with a magnetic coating on it. Analogue sound reproduction is the reverse process, with a bigger loud speaker diaphragm causing changes to atmospheric pressure to form acoustic sound waves. Electronically generated sound waves may also be recorded directly from devices such as an electric guitar pick up or anaesthetizer, without the use of acoustics in the recording process other than the need for musicians to hear how well they are playing during recording sessions.
Digital recording, music studio equipment, sound recording equipment, Audio recording equipment, recording equipment and reproduction converts the analogue sound signal picked up by the microphone to a digital form by a process of digitization, allowing it to be stored and transmitted by a wider variety of media. Digital recording stores audio as a series of binary numbers 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 headed. Digital recordings are considered higher quality than analogue recordings not necessarily because they have higher fidelity wider frequency response, but because the digital format can prevent much loss of quality found in analogue recording due to noise and electrical magnetic interference in playback, and mechanical deterioration or damage to the storage medium. A digital audio signal must be reconverted to analogue form during playback before it is applied to a loudspeaker or earphones.
The first device that could record actual sounds as they passed through the air (but could not play them backthe purpose was only visual study) was the photograph, patented in 1857 by Parisian inventor. The earliest known recordings of the human voice are autograph 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 a coating of soot as the paper was passed under it. An 1860 phonautogram of Au Clair du 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.
The next major technical development was the invention of the gramophone disc, generally credited to Emile Berliner and commercially introduced in the United States in 1889. Discs were easier to manufacture, transport and store, and they had the additional benefit of being louder (marginally) than cylinders, which by necessity, were single-sided. 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 an attempt to regain his market. In various permutations, the audio disc format became the primary medium for consumer sound recordings until the end of the 20th century, and the double-sided 78 rpm shellac disc was the standard consumer music format from the early 1910s to the late 1950s.
