4 ms·

Timeline of audio formats

45 points by kozak 8y ago

esonderegger 8y ago
I don't know why this popped up on the front page of HN today, but for anyone who enjoys the history of audio recordings, I highly recommend checking out UCSB's cylinder preservation and digitization project: http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/ http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/
- jszymborski 8y ago
  I can't help but think of one of my favourite moments of televised schadenfreude when audio cylinders get mentioned. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnsizkVjGm8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnsizkVjGm8
- sp332 8y ago
  And the Great 78 Project is preserving 78 RPM records. http://great78.archive.org/ http://great78.archive.org/ There are over 100,000 recordings available to stream online now. https://archive.org/details/78rpm https://archive.org/details/78rpm (This collection also includes the Cylinder Archive for some reason.) The ones from George Blood are ripped 4 times at once with four tone arms with different needles, then each of the four gets equalized by a sound engineer and one is picked as the best. All 8 copies are uploaded to the Internet Archive. http://great78.archive.org/preservation/ http://great78.archive.org/preservation/
wink 8y ago
> An audio format is a medium for sound recording and reproduction. I expected stuff like AIFF, RIFF, WAV, and MP3 - interesting that that's the exact same term (non-native speaker here) In German we have the word Tonträger [0] which doesn't seem to map to any direct translation on Wikipedia, I know those categories are sometimes diverging between the languages. [0]: https://dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/tontr%C3%A4ger https://dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/tontr%C3%A4ger
- 22c 8y ago
  > Tonträger Closest word in English is phonorecord, it's not really used by the general population.
sosuke 8y ago
What about music boxes? Those go back farther and were a format of music. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_box
intopieces 8y ago
Here I always recommend MP3: The Meaning of a Format by Jonathan Sterne. Fascinating read on how MP3 shaped music for a generation.
another-cuppa 8y ago
I would call many of these "music formats" rather than audio formats. Those punch cards and MIDI etc. don't actually represent audio at all. Even a deaf person could read and appreciate those.
- theandrewbailey 8y ago
  Many of these formats didn't have enough bandwidth to support music when introduced. Most cassette formats were introduced specifically for dictation: > The compact cassette technology was originally designed for dictation machines, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel tape recording in most non-professional applications. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Cassette https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Cassette
Aardwolf 8y ago
Awesome list! A large bunch of the physical formats have been discussed by techmoan's channel on youtube.
slr555 8y ago
Did I miss something or should this be near the beginning in 1898 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_recording https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_recording
- onomonomono 8y ago
  It's there but it's really easy to miss because it doesn't have a picture. I skimmed right past it on my first read! That was a really interesting article, especially this part: "In 1949 at Fuld Hall in Rutgers University, Paul Braverman made a 75-minute recording of a Woody Guthrie concert using a wire recorder. The recording only came to light in 2001, and appears to be the only surviving live recording of Woody Guthrie; it was restored over several years and released on CD in 2007. The CD, The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949, subsequently won the 2008 Grammy Award for Best Historical Album."
  - slr555 8y ago
    Great pick up!!
bdefore 8y ago
All of this innovation and iteration at breakneck speed... and then nothing in ten years since the introduction of microSD. I imagine a combination of everything going cloud based and Wikipedia authors losing interest.
- dcwca 8y ago
  Yeah, they could have tracked the arguably fascinating series of digital formats, from P2P low bitrate mp3, lossless WAV, FLAC, M4A and whatever the big streaming players are using these days. Not to mention the wild and wooly world of wireless encoding via Bluetooth and others.
  - netule 8y ago
    If you have the knowledge, you could add it. It's likely not disinterest, but lack of insight.
JoeDaDude 8y ago
A related topic, for which I'd like to see a compilation, is an encyclopedia of voice coding formats. Developed mostly for and by telephone companies, there have been numerous methods of encoding and compressing human speech for transmission, security, or storage. There is a Wikipedia page on the topic [1], but the subject is deep and the list is longer than Wikipeida can cover. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocoder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocoder

45 points by kozak 8y ago

I don't know why this popped up on the front page of HN today, but for anyone who enjoys the history of audio recordings, I highly recommend checking out UCSB's cylinder preservation and digitization project: http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/ http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/

jszymborski 8y ago
I can't help but think of one of my favourite moments of televised schadenfreude when audio cylinders get mentioned. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnsizkVjGm8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnsizkVjGm8
sp332 8y ago
And the Great 78 Project is preserving 78 RPM records. http://great78.archive.org/ http://great78.archive.org/ There are over 100,000 recordings available to stream online now. https://archive.org/details/78rpm https://archive.org/details/78rpm (This collection also includes the Cylinder Archive for some reason.) The ones from George Blood are ripped 4 times at once with four tone arms with different needles, then each of the four gets equalized by a sound engineer and one is picked as the best. All 8 copies are uploaded to the Internet Archive. http://great78.archive.org/preservation/ http://great78.archive.org/preservation/

wink 8y ago

> An audio format is a medium for sound recording and reproduction. I expected stuff like AIFF, RIFF, WAV, and MP3 - interesting that that's the exact same term (non-native speaker here) In German we have the word Tonträger [0] which doesn't seem to map to any direct translation on Wikipedia, I know those categories are sometimes diverging between the languages. [0]: https://dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/tontr%C3%A4ger https://dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/tontr%C3%A4ger

22c 8y ago
> Tonträger Closest word in English is phonorecord, it's not really used by the general population.

sosuke 8y ago

What about music boxes? Those go back farther and were a format of music. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_box

intopieces 8y ago

Here I always recommend MP3: The Meaning of a Format by Jonathan Sterne. Fascinating read on how MP3 shaped music for a generation.

another-cuppa 8y ago

I would call many of these "music formats" rather than audio formats. Those punch cards and MIDI etc. don't actually represent audio at all. Even a deaf person could read and appreciate those.

theandrewbailey 8y ago
Many of these formats didn't have enough bandwidth to support music when introduced. Most cassette formats were introduced specifically for dictation: > The compact cassette technology was originally designed for dictation machines, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel tape recording in most non-professional applications. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Cassette https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Cassette

Aardwolf 8y ago

Awesome list! A large bunch of the physical formats have been discussed by techmoan's channel on youtube.

slr555 8y ago

Did I miss something or should this be near the beginning in 1898 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_recording https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_recording

onomonomono 8y ago
It's there but it's really easy to miss because it doesn't have a picture. I skimmed right past it on my first read! That was a really interesting article, especially this part: "In 1949 at Fuld Hall in Rutgers University, Paul Braverman made a 75-minute recording of a Woody Guthrie concert using a wire recorder. The recording only came to light in 2001, and appears to be the only surviving live recording of Woody Guthrie; it was restored over several years and released on CD in 2007. The CD, The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949, subsequently won the 2008 Grammy Award for Best Historical Album."
- slr555 8y ago
  Great pick up!!

bdefore 8y ago

All of this innovation and iteration at breakneck speed... and then nothing in ten years since the introduction of microSD. I imagine a combination of everything going cloud based and Wikipedia authors losing interest.

dcwca 8y ago
Yeah, they could have tracked the arguably fascinating series of digital formats, from P2P low bitrate mp3, lossless WAV, FLAC, M4A and whatever the big streaming players are using these days. Not to mention the wild and wooly world of wireless encoding via Bluetooth and others.
- netule 8y ago
  If you have the knowledge, you could add it. It's likely not disinterest, but lack of insight.

JoeDaDude 8y ago

A related topic, for which I'd like to see a compilation, is an encyclopedia of voice coding formats. Developed mostly for and by telephone companies, there have been numerous methods of encoding and compressing human speech for transmission, security, or storage. There is a Wikipedia page on the topic [1], but the subject is deep and the list is longer than Wikipeida can cover. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocoder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocoder