1Įvidently, this is not how recordings are stored in digital media, among them: CD-ROMS, hard-drives, memory sticks, music players, and smartphones. Edison’s simple metal needle, however, could keep up-simply because every sound, even the most complex or polyphonous, one played simultaneously by a hundred musicians, formed a single amplitude on the time axis. The phonograph permitted for the first time the recording of vibrations that human ears could not count, human eyes could not see, and writing hands could not catch up with. To play back the sound, the flow of motion would essentially be reversed: the rotating disk causes the stylus to move, very slightly, retracing the grooves made during the recording process and causing a loudspeaker cone to vibrate analogously, setting the air in motion more or less as it was recorded, resulting in playback. The contours of this groove are the material trace of the recorded sound. The motion caused by the changing air pressure, traveling through a mechanical linkage, caused a stylus to move creating a groove of varying depth on the recording medium. The earliest recording technologies captured the motion of the air and mechanically transfer this motion to a recording surface: first, rotating wax and foil cylinders eventually, vinyl records. Music is sound and sound is vibrating air. Sonic Visualiser I (9/12) Back to Top From analog to digital
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