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Impact of digitalization on the music industry
What has digital technology done for the music industry
Analog recording vs digital recording
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Recommended: Impact of digitalization on the music industry
Kyle Rhine
Media 4
Communications Technologies
May 15 2014
Digital Recording
Recording technology wasn’t always a digital process. Before the 1970s, all recordings depended on capturing a physical analogue sound with microphones. This was done on either tape or disk. Analogue recordings lacked the sonic integrity that the 21st century demanded; it was becoming increasingly problematic and expensive in reducing noise and distortion that plagued analogue recordings. As a result, audio researchers began to study digital conversion techniques. They discovered that digitizing an electrical audio signal consisted of sampling the audio wave thousands of times a second, measuring the peak amplitude of each sample, and then assigning one of a limited number of binary values to each.
In analogue recording, the noise floor and distortion often accumulated at the recording and post-production stages, while a digital recordings signal was cleanly represented through binary values. In 1967, the first digital tape recorder was seen in Japan and was involved in the first digitally mastered records in 1972. The Sony PCM-1 was the first commercially available digital recording device. It converted captured analogue signal into a digital binary format. Initially digital records were still released on vinyl in analogue but in 1982 Sony and Philips released the first compact discs. Friction and noise from physical contact was now eliminated allowing a much clearer sonic representation. In 1987, digital audio tapes were introduced however record companies opposed a medium that allowed flawless copies of compact discs to be made so digital audio tapes were never released in America, however were quite popular for professional recordings. In 1995 the ...
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...popularized with absolutely no real instruments being played. We live in a world now where the keyboard is the best instrument you could play. Violins, drums, guitars, any instrument you could imagine can now be emulated with a synthesizer and programmed in a computer.
Digital Audio in music gave middle class people a chance to step foot in the music industry. Lowering costs, ultimately, allowing for a much larger demographic in audio engineering careers. People can now be creative and utilize affordable technologies with no limitations other than their own creativity. We live in a time of complete opportunity; limits are only defined by the individual. Technology will continue to improve and so will the music created by it. "There is a new, tonal vocabulary hidden there that could transform musical composition and create another wealth of great artistic works."
Before 1925 recordings were made with an acoustical horn that would capture the sound of the musicians in front of it and transferred the vibration to a cutting stylus. No electricity was used. This process was called the acoustical process. In 1925, microphones were introduced to transfer the acoustical energy to an electric signal, which fed the cutting stylus. This electrical process ameliorated recordings sound.
Sound quality is an essential part of any sound machine. What good would an audio machine do if you can’t understand the music or the person speaking? The early recordings of the phonograph were poor. The quality was bad, the recordings were brief, and it could only be used two to three times. It shows how the phonograph doesn’t hold up. These new CDs blow
Different devices can change music immensely. For example, many people think of an instrument as something that involves keys, valves, or strings, but the truth is that something as simple as your voice or as complicated as a computer can create music just the same as a traditional instrument. Before fancy sound boards and computers were around to manipulate music into almost unnatural perfection, there was just a person with their instrument and an audience. If somebody messed up then it would be heard, but the world wouldn’t end. Now it is completely absurd to hear music that is not completely perfect thanks to the use of sound editing software, autotune, and lip
After two years, Futurist Luigi Russolo, published a book called The Art of Noise. In his book, he suggested; “Music sound is too limited in qualitative variety of timbre … we must break out of this narrow circle of pure musical sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise sounds.” (Note: the noise mentioned above is not about the unpleasant sound. It refers to the sound from the nature. For instance, Screams, whispering, boom, Whistles, .etc.) The book mounds a basic concept about electronic music.
For most careers, sound is used as a medium for communicating thoughts, ideas, and important information. For this very reason, it is unlikely that you would ever see an office space with tall ceilings and hardwood floor—as people would be unable to clearly communicate with each other due to the echoic effects of the architectural structure. Instead, office spaces have relatively low ceilings and carpeted floor to reduce the number of reflections from a sound source. This allows our voices to be heard clearly for the intended audience—whether a cubicle neighbor, or a group of people in a conference room. However, a large number of industrial workplaces produce sound pollution as a result of machinery. For these particular environments, sound absorption and isolation techniques are used to reduce noise pollution and create safer aural environments for employees. With this concept of utilizing sound and disposing sound, we can take a closer look at a career in music production—a job that meticulously considers every aspect of sound. While the engineers that produce ‘billboard albums’ rely greatly on their choice of equipment and their ears, the environment in which they record, mix and master plays a tremendous role in the clarity and the overall soundscape.
Electronic devices were developed around the end of the 19th century when people began to use magnetic audio tape to record sounds. Once sounds could be recorded, they could be manipulated. As musicians across the world began to experiment
As society in the world constantly changes, music changes also throughout the years. Music today has become more “mechanized” and is making the music industry easier to get involved in than ever before. Musicians have been given numerous opportunities to create music of any sort at just a fingers touch. Music is no longer having to be recorded in a studio or being played live in a bar now a days it’s as easy as downloading a single app that will do just about anything a recording studio would do and doing it all on your own. How cool is it to being your own bass player, drummer, and pianist etc. on your own track made all by you. With a smartphone it’s as easy as uploading your track to a soc...
Nothing in this world remains stationary. Everything is constantly changing and advancing, and technology is no exception. Daily, new technological inventions are being created. One of the more recent ideas is the electronification of music. Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, electronic music has done nothing but aid in the growth of humanity. This form of music is commonly disliked and labeled as “fake music,” but it is actually the exact opposite of these ignorant remarks. Electronic music has progressed throughout the years, completely revolutionizing society through its innovative properties and educational qualities.
With each passing year, technology has become highly involved in our lives, and continues to at a rapidly increasing rate. Technology, in many ways, was designed to help people in various fields of work. However, it has also achieved the reciprocal. Where does music lie? Has technology hurt or helped the field of music, specifically hip-hop? What do these advancements mean for the genre?
Music and the relationships of music have changed drastically in our society. The course of studies and the evaluations of the applications of the technology of music, the making and the listening of music have changed in the way we listen to music, the styles of music in our society and in the media. The importance of the technology in music today, has, over the past century been charted through the study of musical examples and through viewing how human values are reflected in this century's timely music. There are very many different types of music that are listened to. There are readings, writings, lectures and discussions on all the different types of music.
... of the carbon microphone that make is so distinct from all other electronic sender tones. With the combination of the real sound of a voice passing through the carbon microphone fused with the technology we have today, the model that is created by Oksanen and Valimaki and used by a range of producers “incorporates a filtered noise source to model the self-induced noise generated by the carbon microphones” (Oksanen, Valimaki 27). With the scientific ability our world has today, we are able to recreate a sound that was first discovered over a century ago. The development of the carbon button microphone definitely makes a statement about our ever-changing technological society. Although it was an object invented many years ago during the Second Industrial Revolution, it has been altered and improved and has therefore left an everlasting impact on our society.
As electronics is a wide part of the industry now having converted over to a Digital Audio Workspace or D.A.W systems from analogue tape which is a dying art amongst newer budding engineers today from adjusting to the setup skills all are replaced by a computer of some sort and a recording platform such as a D.A.W. Digital Audio workstations’ come on many computer based platforms, though having a good understanding of at least the more commonly found systems seems to benefit all recording studio engineers as this allows them to virtually be able to walk into any studio be it in their own city or abroad in another country an still be able to deliver a quality product to whomever their clients may
In the 1920’s a combination of amplified systems, electrical recording and advent of magnetic recording helped drive on the recording industry for the next couple of centuries. For example in 1963 the audio cassette tape format was introduced and became popular amongst audio enthusiasts. Sony then developed the first digital recording device in 1978 and this was used mainly by professional studio users. The first commercial digital audio player which used compact discs became available in 1988 followed by mini discs in 1992. Digital audio players which used the MP3 format became highly successf...
...er a seeping into the global culture, a pervasiveness as no other century has experienced. Very few people today would question the concept of conveying emotion across thousands of miles encoded in a series of ones and zeroes, but this must have sounded like a preposterous idea at one time. The levels of abstraction allowed by digital computing has irreversibly changed the music world and brought new forms of creation into being.
In the simplest possible terms, what digital analysis uncovers are the acoustic features of the sounds captured by the tape recorder; what are actually heard are the perceptual features of the same sounds. The acoustic and perceptual characteristics of sound are not the same, nor in many cases is there a one-to-one correspondence between them.