Preservation Sound

Author: chris

  • Turn your turntable into a tape machine! (1952)

    From the pages of AUDIO ENGINEERING, ’52: the Presto TL-10.

    Next in this series: Turn your tape machine into a CD Player!   Followed by… oh shit then it’s the end of physical recorded music media.

  • Speak-o-phone: Turn your PA amp into a record-cutter! (1940)

    Records on Acetate or Aluminum discs!  Click here for more info on this early recording service/hardware manufacturer.  

  • Popular Science: Basic Radio Techniques c. 1946

    Nothing too notable in this book; just love the cover graphic.

  • 1943: A Dictionary of Radio Terms

    From “A Dictionary of Radio Terms,” published by the Allied Radio Corp., 1943.

  • 1940: Radioman Romance

    Was electronics repair ever a ‘sexy’ profession?  “RADIO NEWS” March 1940 seems to make this case.  Wishful thinking, I imagine…

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  • Magnecord INC archival factory-film now available online

    Thanks to H. Layer: A never-before-available Magnecord, INC factory-film circ 1955 (???) is now available on YouTube.  These are the people that built the machines that powered broadcast tape-recording on the 1950s.

    Click here to see the video on YouTube

    Loads more Magnecord INC history and related information on PS dot com… just click here!

  • Beyond Four Tracks

    Sansui six-track cassette format c. 1989

    Otari Compact 8-track 1/2″ format c. 1989.   Also, SECK mixer.

    Toa 8-track cassette format

    …and you better bet TASCAM made one too.

    Above: some short-lived “more-than-four” home-recording formats that were available between the 4-track cassette and ADAT eras.   It’s kind hard to imagine how significant an issue ‘track count’ (IE., the number of available tracks of a particular multi-track recording machine) was just a short while ago.  It’s not unusual at all these days for me to make a production for an artist that has 80 or even 100 tracks.  And I am not talking about some crazy orchestral or prog-rock epic; I am talking about just a well-produced indie pop song.  Modern music means layering.  Lots of it.  When I, and many other folks started doing this, we dreamed of someday having more than 8 tracks to work with.  Well, as it turns out, ‘more’ didn’t mean 16, 24, or even 48: it meant infinite.  “Be careful what you wish for…”

    What will be the next technological barrier to fall in the world of audio production?

    I wouldn’t mind seeing all those goddamn wires go away, for one…

    Any other ideas?

  • Ladies and Gentlemen of 1989 (pop music division)

    Cyborg chick with some sort of midi-synchonizer

    I play the keyboards (for Bon Jovi)

    (pointy guitars are) impossible to (avoid) / (resist)

    “Well I like your style too, man.  Got a whole cowboy thing goin…”

     

  • The Concept of Home Studio Carried To Its Logical Conclusion

    Bathroom Studio

    Kitchen Studio

    Yamaha home-studio adverts circa 1989.  Click on the images to expand.

  • Synthesizers photographed on stone-colored backgrounds

    As the first in a series of “Brief Trends in Visual Culture,” we bring you: synthesizers photographed on stone-colored backgrounds.  Pictured above: Roland  S50, Korg SG1, EMU Emax SE and Emulator 3.  If anyone can explain the significance of the all the stone-gray backgrounds, please let us know.