Muzak Holdings - Early Playback Technology

Early Playback Technology

At this time, the technology involved remained crude as the music originated from gramophone records played manually on specially-designed turntables operated at a central office location.

Each sixteen-inch non-microgroove vertically-cut electrical transcription disc was capable of carring up to 20 minutes of music per side, but in reality, the fidelity during the last five or six minutes or so of any conventionally-cut side from the edge to the center, or the first five or six minutes of any side cut center-to-edge was unusable for transmission as the sound coming off the disc would already be muffled and narrow-range in that area, adding insult to injury on the narrow-band electric lines of the period to the point of being unintelligible by the listener.

At first, it was decided that disc sides would be cut alternately from the center to the edge for odd sides and from the edge to the center for even sides as radio had done for live recording for some time.

In addition, it was hoped that programming quieter and more bass-heavy material at the center (beginning of odd sides or ends of even sides) would alleviate this problem, but it did not. Coupled with the fact that some programmers preferred louder more upbeat songs at the beginning and end of their program segments, caused them to cut odd sides outside in and even sides inside out, so that the tops and bottoms of hours would end on an upbeat note - as modern radio programmers do today.

However this practice only served to aggravate a number of the phonograph operators at the transmitter sites who, in the dim light conditions of the playback studios in those days - couldn't keep track or read the label to discern the start location of the disc.

Therefore the decision was made to record all discs conventionally from outside-in, and to limit the first three programs in any one hour to 14 minutes and 30 seconds in length and the last program in the hour to twelve minutes and thirty seconds, leaving the rest of the time to silence. This happenstance decision resulting from limitations in technology returned an extremely high level of customer satisfaction compared to the constant drone of music 24-7 in the previous format.