Comments on: His Master's Voice

His Master's Voice

flapjax at midnite — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:00:27 -0800

"And I saw records made! Music literally written in wax!" RCA Victor takes you, step by step, through the records manufacturing process of 1942. A few years later, they brought us the cassette tape, though it wasn't exactly "compact" yet. And let's not forget that RCA "exclusive": Living Stereo! "You know, in this gimmicky world of ours, RCA has never lost sight of what they started out to do: to reproduce sound with so much clarity and fidelity that you could "close your eyes and think you're there."

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:03:37 -0800

Here's a YouTube clip from a fellow proud of his 1958 RCA Sound Tape Cartridge machine.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:10:24 -0800

Oh, and I almost forgot, the RCA Victor Studiomatic Changer! Protects them on the spindle, protects them on the groove!

By: KevinSkomsvold

KevinSkomsvold — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:14:53 -0800

Nice! Along those same lines, if you get a chance, check out the Tom Dowd documentary "The Language of Music." That guy was involved in most of the early recording techniques and invented a few (he was the guy who came up with the idea of a slider rather than a knob on a mixing board). Pretty cool stuff.

By: Thorzdad

Thorzdad — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:22:50 -0800

And to think RCA also gave us the CED VideoDisc.

By: chillmost

chillmost — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:23:06 -0800

Ha! I met Tom Dowd once and he said something along the lines of, "When I first started out in this business, we recorded to direct to disc. Now we've come full circle and we record, again, direct to disc". There was a cool Mr. Rogers episode where shows how they would cut a record on a lathe. In the late 90's there were some recording studios that had a lathe which allowed hip-hop producers to craft a beat and then cut it to disc. Then then would sample it back in to get that dirty vinyl sound or have a DJ scratch with it to get some cool cuts. Now there are plug-ins and other software that do that now.

By: eye of newt

eye of newt — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 08:20:24 -0800

That isn't a cassette, but a Tape Cartridge, which the link tells us can be loaded in "2 and 2/5 seconds, exactly!" The tape cartridge, which looks like a cassette on steroids, was ahead of its time and probably offered better sound quality than the later cassette. Philips came out with the more convenient cassette, and basically open-sourced it to guarantee it would win.

By: caddis

caddis — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 08:52:22 -0800

Yes, we truly have come full circle.

By: hortense

hortense — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 08:59:13 -0800

Shaded Dogs

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:25:56 -0800

My litmus test whenever listening to music I haven't heard before: Do I feel like the dog looks when he hears his master's voice?

By: Lanark

Lanark — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:03:48 -0800

So thats what mastering engineers used to do Not any more: "I always went for loud. Not meaning to destroy anything, but..." - Brian Gardner (who started out at RCA)

By: DarlingBri

DarlingBri — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:12:12 -0800

More along the same lines: A lot of this, and really the entire history of music recording, technology development, and industry competition, is covered in Where Have All The Good Times Gone?, an excellent transatlantic history from British journalist Louis Barfe. More here.

By: nola

nola — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:26:20 -0800

Hey I missed this when you first posted; nice find.