The Basics of Audio Recording

Audio recording has been with us for more than a hundred years. The phonograph was invented by Thomas Edison in 1877. It recorded sound by producing grooves on a soft cylinder which could be played back by running a needle through the grooves and amplifying the sound. The next major development in audio recording was magnetic recording. Tape recorders were developed in Germany and have been in common use from the early 1930s up until recently. They are still being used, but are increasingly being supplanted by digital recorders. Magnetic tape recorders have been the essential tools in the development of the recorded music industry. With the introduction of multitrack tape recorders in the 1950s, came the ability to produce new multilayered sounds. Audio recording using four track tape recorders was the standard during the 1960s. When the first four tracks were completed, they were