History of Sound Recording - Electrical Recording

Electrical Recording

Both phonograph cylinders and gramophone discs were played on mechanical devices most commonly hand wound with a clockwork motor. The sound was amplified by a cone that was attached to the diaphragm. The disc record fell into public favor quickly, and cylinders were not produced after 1929. The advent of electrical recording in 1925 drastically improved the quality of the recording process of disc records. There was a period of nearly five years, from 1925 to 1930, when the premiere technology for home sound reproduction consisted of a combination of electrically recorded records with the specially-developed Victor Orthophonic phonograph, a spring-wound acoustic phonograph which used waveguide engineering and a folded horn to provide a reasonably flat frequency response. Electrically powered phonographs were introduced c. 1930, but crystal pickups and electronic reproduction did not become common until the late 1930s.

The advent of electrical recording made it possible to use microphones to capture the sound of the performance. The leading record labels switched to the electric microphone process in 1925, and most other record companies followed their lead by the end of the decade. Electrical recording increased the flexibility of the process and the sound quality of the recordings. However, the performance was still cut directly to the recording medium, so if a mistake was made the recording was useless.

Electrical recording made it more feasible to record one part to disc and then play that back while playing another part, recording both parts to a second disc. This is called over-dubbing. The first commercially issued records using over-dubbing were released by the Victor Talking Machine Company in the late 1920s. However overdubbing was of limited use until the advent of analogue audio tape. Use of tape overdubbing was pioneered by Les Paul and is called 'sound on sound' recording. Studios thus could create recorded "performances" that could not be duplicated by the same artists performing live.