Comments on: The Evolution of Song Storage

By: Dave F

Dave F — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 19:51:53 +0000

The trouble with the cloud is you have to be in an area that has cell coverage. Fortunately many places in Montana are still remote enough to be without coverage. Thank goodness for that. Peace and quiet prevail…. While traveling it is iffy to be able to pick up the cloud so those prehistoric CD’s or MP3s/Wav files still are the way to go.

By: Leonard Hunter

Leonard Hunter — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 22:43:03 +0000

An audiophile friend helped calibrate my Axiom 60/500 system. He is an admitted purist who looked askance at my inclusion of an iPod in the system. He refused to listen to it claiming the MP3 compression format “stripped 95% of the original data from the program material”. CD’s do sound better on my system than MP3 material (on the iPod or internet radio) but certainly not 95% better. How much quality do we miss with MP3?

By: Dayvv

Dayvv — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 18:02:12 +0000

Very cool! But records were around way before 1950, weren’t they?

By: John K

John K — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 18:02:11 +0000

A couple of others that come to mind are reel-to-reel tape (which made an appearance in a couple of demo rooms at this year’s Rocky Mountain Audio Festival), and elcaset, a short lived, larger version of the cassette tape designed to take sonic advantage of larger tape (I never got to hear this one).

By: Rob Parkhurst

Rob Parkhurst — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 17:25:49 +0000

They were 7 inches and had one song on each side. But everyone called them 45s not 7 inchers.

By: Rob Parkhurst

Rob Parkhurst — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 17:23:21 +0000

Also, in the 1950's and 60's we used 45 rpm vinyl records and we all called them 45s.
not their size, which I think was 8 inches.

By: Rob Parkhurst

Rob Parkhurst — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 17:20:17 +0000

Before cassette tape was the 8 track tape. It was a continuous loop of magnetic tape and mostly used in car stereos. Short lived as cassette tapes had better sound quality, were smaller in size and could hold more music.

By: JR Smith

JR Smith — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 16:35:47 +0000

I agree that this is an interesting read but I remember listening to 78 RPM discs in the 1940s. To the best of my recollection, they came in 10″ and 12″ sizes. The player we had at the time played only at 78 RPM. I believe the shellac based discs came about in 1895 which I suppose is why they aren’t listed as well as the lack of listing of the wax cylinder (late 1880s). Thanks for the blog.

By: Rob Hunter

Rob Hunter — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 04:16:03 +0000

A number of years back it was said that MP3 was the first step backwards in music sound quality in the history of recorded music, but considering this list includes paper rolls (I assume) played on player pianos that the first step back would be from this format to analog records. Can't do better in sound quality than the actual instrument itself! I'm also guessing that because the wax cylinder was invented in the 1800's is why it's not listed. Altogether an interesting read. Thanks for posting.