Save Music and Voice on CD

Why Transfer collectables to CD format?

2) Create individual song tracks from records and cassette.

3) Create individual songs. Add titles and art work from the record and cassette and place them on the CD
 

Still the most popular media for home and automobiles. This format is the most common in (older) automobiles today.

It is cheap, easy to store and holds from 60, 90 to 120 minutes of recording.

The more music, the thinner the tape and the shorter the life.
Once the tape is broken the cassette is useless UNLESS you contact a professional

The success of this format was insured when cassette recorders were made available. For the first time the average person could create a music mix of their choice. This was an incredible leap in providing personalized music listening choices.
Picture shown is really a cassette adapter. I used in my car to connect my portable MP3 player and play it through the car radio


None would match the impact of a cassette until around the year 2000 when CD writers became available at a reasonable price.

The format that is usually compared to the BetaMax video tape format. Both had advantages that should have made them the dominant media of choice.

While BetaMax had superior picture quality to the surviving VHS format it was doomed due to tape failures and its bulky size compared to the cassette.
The 8-Track had good sound quality and it was easier to locate favorite tracks.


It does still survives as a curiosity and as the butt of jokes at late night shows and (other) cheap comedy shows.
 

Considered the tool choice for professionals.

It is the common method for security companies or police to record interviews and telephone conversation during stake outs. Just watch any police type show on television (or the movie Stakeout)

Depending on whether the reels are 7" or 10" in diameter, the total amount of recording can be up to 12 hours.
It has a feature by which it can play endlessly using an auto-reverse mode option which is activated by a small piece of "aluminum" tape pasted at the beginning and at the end.
It has provided the background music for many cousins weekends in West Bloomfield and Paris, France

It suffers from the same problem as cassette and 8-Track tapes: They are magnetic and have a limited live expectancy.
Broken tape can be sliced fairly easily (if you have the right equipment)

Comment on tape speeds
Cassettes play at about 1 7/8 inch per second (some cassette duplicators have a nifty feature to "dub" at twice the speed)
Reel-to-Reel play at 1 7/8, 3 1/2 and 7 inch per second. The very expensive home systems went up to 15 inch per second.
 The higher the speed the better the quality.

Reel to Reel recording tricks
When early recordings were made of mono sound, it was considered a waste to record in two channels when the left and the right really contained the same signal. So the frugal recorder would record using the left channel only and then fill the right channel in a subsequent session. Which meant that instead of 12 hours one could store 24 hours of music on a single 7" reel.

My largest project
In the 70's there were a number of broadcasts of the "History of Rock and Roll". It started on Friday and run uninterrupted through Sunday for a whopping total of 64 hours. It was announced months ahead of time and it became a quest on my part to record the entire session. I could record on one side for six (6) hours turn the tape over and record another 6 hours, using six tapes in total.
There was a serious problem on Sunday: A family event that I had to attend would mean I would not be at home to reset the tape at the end of a six hour period. Here was my solution. We happened to have an  electric stove in the kitchen with an outlet that was controlled by a timer (A rather advanced feature at the time). Since one of my Reel-to-Reel recorders (Two were needed if one wanted to do any music editing at all, I thought that would be obvious by now) could be preset, I connected it to that outlet on the stove. It worked like a charm and when I came home the second recorder was about one hour before the end of the length of tape

Over the next several weeks I patiently edited the original tapes to remove the adverting. The final Rock and Roll history was reduced from six tapes and 64 hours to 4 tapes and 48 hours. Maybe some day I will transfer it to CD which will take close to 40 CD's. Maybe I will wait for the next generation of super CD's......

The Phonograph, Gramophone,  Record player or Turntable

Invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison and his first recoding was the children's song "Mary had a little lamb". He did not sing it he simply spoke the words

A whole new vocabulary has become associated with the Record player or Turntable.

Nearly everyone vs. the Purist

Radio ($75) vs. Receiver ($400)
Record player ($50) vs. Turntable ($500-700)
Needle ($10) vs. Cartridge ($200)
One Speaker ($50) vs. Surround Sound ($600+)

So a casual comment like "I need to get a needle for my record player" would immediately put one in the lower class category. No self respecting purist would bother to speak to you ever again.
The cost of Turntables varied from $49 for a reasonable unit to a whopping $700 for a linear blah, blah with advanced functions that would lower the needle (I mean the cartridge) ever so gently on the record. Lowering it by hand was just not an acceptable method. It could damage the record or even worse, it could ruin the $200 cartridge.
 

The best known picture of the original Phonograph is the "His Master Voice" from RCA, a picture of a dog next to an old fashioned player.
 The needle (definitely NOT a cartridge) that was used to play the record looked more like a roofing nail than a "needle"
 

Vinyl records (78, 45 and 33 RPM)

The most original of all music formats (lets not consider copper drums and wire like devices we will save that for the advanced class)
 

78 RPM Singles.  They were first introduced in the early 1900's

. They were spinning at a speed of 78 RPM and have become somewhat of a collectors item, in spite of scratches and mediocre mono sound quality.
Worst of all: They were very breakable especially at parties.

To make sure that both sides were played, early records would end with a message:
 If you enjoyed what you listened to, turn it over for more listening pleasures on the other side

45 RPM Single The speed was reduced to 45 RPM in the 50.s and a radical phenomena of Stereo was introduced at the same time. Up to that point, records were only available in mono format. The idea of a "left" and a "right" side speaker was not associated with different sound signal. They both would produce the same sound

As Rock music became more and more popular, many millions were sold and the term "Golden Records" was coined to reward the artist when the first million records were sold.

The EP format was introduced with two (2) songs on either side. My favorite one (still in my possession) is an Elvis EP with the following songs: Hound Dog, Don't Be Cruel, Blue Suede Shoes and Love Me. It just doesn't get any better.

Stereo and Quadraphonic: During the 60's and 70's a push was made to introduce Quadraphonic sound systems. The concept can be compared to today's "Surround Sound" systems. However, since most home radios had just been upgraded from mono to stereo, most music lovers were not financially ready to spend twice as much again to venture into a format that had received only lube warm reception. As potential users waited for the price to be reduced, record producers were waiting for the right time to switch to quadraphonic vinyl records. In the end, the waiting game caused quadraphonic to become an interesting footnote in music history.

33 RPM LP The ultimate record arrived in the late 50's and was the dominant media from the 60's to the 90's.

This format allowed the music hobbyist to listen uninterrupted to as much as 30 minutes on each side. Typically each side contained five to seven songs for a total of about twelve songs per record. Guess what, that is still the norm on today's CD format

The current estimate is that approximately 50 Billion LP's have been sold, with 99.999 percent of those sold in old fashioned record stores.

The "Golden Record" equivalent of the 45 RPM single, was turned into a "Platinum" record when more than 500,000 albums were sold.

Sound from music and voice are stored as waves and like all computer data can be edited if you have the right tool.
When recording from Vinyl, Cassette, 8-Track or Reel-to-Reel the music (or voice) it gets recorded as one big "glob" without any way to directly identify songs. A sound wave editor needs to be used to "split" the glob into the segments that constitute the songs. They then need to be named, consistent with  the record cover art work
Normally there is 1-2 second of silence between songs, which makes it possible to determine the start and end of each song. In addition, if one gets distracted while recording, the recording process will continue even if there is no more music being played. That is the reason the wave picture below has a two minute trail of "nothing" on the right hand side.

Vinyl Covers That I have used
 

2. The Beatles

10. Supremes
 

10. The Rolling Stones

Some interesting statistics

 Ultimate Elvis Page

Album and CD covers

Rolling Stone Magazine
 

Have You Ever Sang The Wrong Song Lyrics?

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