Music Sound

Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical or mechanical re-creation and/or amplification of sound, often as music. This involves the use of audio equipment such as microphones, recording devices and loudspeakers. From early beginnings with the invention of the phonograph using purely mechanical techniques, the field has advanced with the invention of electrical recording, the mass production of the 78 record, the magnetic wire recorder followed by the tape recorder, the vinyl LP record. The invention of the compact cassette in the 1960's, followed by the walkman, gave a major boost to the mass distribution of music recordings, and the invention of digital recording and the compact disc in 1983 brought massive improvements in ruggedness and quality. The most recent developments have been in digital audio players like the Apple iPod.

The field covers many areas, from Hi-Fi to Professional audio, Internet radio and Podcasting.

Developments in recording and editing have transformed the record, movie and television industries in recent decades. Editing became practicable with the invention of magnetic tape recording but computers and digital processing made it much easier, quicker and more powerful. We now divide the process of making a recording into tracking, mixing and mastering. Multitrack recording makes it possible to capture sound from several microphones, or from different 'takes' to tape or disc with maximum headroom and quality, allowing maximum flexibility in the mixing and mastering stages for editing, level balancing, compressing and limiting, and the addition of effects such as reverberation, equalisation, flanging and many more.

The Beatles, under producer George Martin, were among the first to experiment with multitrack techniques and effects on the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.