Encyclopedia
Timeline of audio formats
Evolution of auditory media
An audio format is a medium for sound recording and reproduction. The term is applied to both the physical recording media and the recording formats of the audio content, in computer science it is often limited to the audio file format, but its wider use usually refers to the physical method used to store the data. Note on the use of analog compared to digital in this list; the definition of digital used here for early formats is that which is represented using discrete values rather than fluctuating variables. A piano roll is digital as it has discrete values, that being a hole for each key, unlike a phonograph record which is analog with a fluctuating groove.
Music is recorded and distributed using a variety of audio formats, some of which store additional information.
01Timeline of audio format developments
| Year | Physical media formats | Recording formats |
|---|---|---|
| 1805 | Panharmonicon | Digital, automated sound reproducing machine. |
| 1810s | Organ Cob | Mechanical digital, also known as a barrel organ. Nails in wooden cylinder actuate mechanical parts of organ. |
| 1817 | Apollonicon | Digital, automated sound reproducing machine. |
| 1851 | Piano Cylinder | Digital, automatically played by means of revolving cylinders |
| 1877 | Tinfoil Phonograph | Analog; sound waveform transcribed to tinfoil |
| 1883 | Piano roll | Digital (vacuum-operated piano) |
| 1886 | Music Box disc | Digital (vacuum-operated music box) |
| Late 1880s | Brown Wax cylinder | Analog; vertical groove, vertical stylus motion, could be re-recorded |
| Ediphone, Dictaphone | Analog, the Ediphone and subsequent wax cylinders used in Edison's other product lines continued to be sold up until 1929 when the Edison Manufacturing Company folded. | |
| 1894 | Pathé cylinder | Mechanical analog; vertical grooves, vertical stylus motion |
| 1897 | 78rpm Record (Emile Berliner Patent) | Mechanical analog; lateral groove, horizontal stylus motion, early examples made from hard rubber, most made from shellac. |
| 1898 | Wire recording | Analog; magnetization; DC bias |
| 1902 | Edison Gold Moulded Record | Mechanical analog; vertical groove, horizontal stylus motion, made from hard black wax, 160 rpm standard, 100 threads per inch |
| 1903 | Phonograph Postcard | Mechanical analog; lateral groove, horizontal stylus motion |
| 1905 | Centre-start phonograph Record | Mechanical analog; lateral groove, horizontal stylus motion, starts from the centre of the disc |
| Pathé disc | Mechanical analog; vertical groove, vertical stylus motion. Alternative to 78s manufactured by Pathé Records, Brunswick Records and Grey Gull Records. | |
| 1908 | 2-minute or Amberol Cylinder Record | Mechanical analog; vertical groove, vertical stylus motion, made from hard black wax, 160 rpm standard, 200 threads per inch. Best known are the later 12-inch Amberols, which came out in 1912. |
| 1912 | Diamond Disc | Mechanical analog; vertical groove, vertical stylus motion, made from Bakelite or china clay |
| 1924 | Electrical cut 78 | Mechanical analog; electrically cut from amplified microphone signal, lateral groove, horizontal stylus motion, most at now standardized 78 rpm A record player for electrical cut 78s can play acoustic 78s, but one should not play electrical cut 78s on a record player meant for acoustic 78s. |
| 1930 | Filmophone flexible record | Mechanical analog; lateral groove, horizontal stylus movement, made from cellulose of various colours, 78 rpm |
| Durium Record or Hit of the Week Records | Mechanical analog; lateral groove, made from paper coated in a brown resin (Durium) | |
| 1930s | Reel-to-reel, magnetic tape | Analog; magnetization; AC "bias" dramatically increases linearity/fidelity, tape speed at 30 ips, later 15 ips and other refined speeds: 7+1⁄2 ips, 3+3⁄4 ips, 1+7⁄8 ips |
| Electrical transcriptions | Mechanical analog; electrically cut from amplified microphone signal, high fidelity sound, lateral or vertical groove, horizontal or vertical stylus motion, most discs 16" at 33+1⁄3 rpm | |
| 1942 | SoundScriber | Mechanical analog; vertical groove, 4-6 inch discs, it recorded sound by pressing grooves into soft vinyl discs |
| 1947 | Dictabelt (Memobelt) | Analog, medium consisting of a thin, plastic belt 3.5" wide that was placed on a cylinder and rotated like a tank tread, developed by the Dictaphone company in 1947 |
| 1948 | 33.3 RPM LP record (Columbia) | Analog, with preemphasis and other equalization techniques (LP, RIAA); lateral groove, horizontal stylus motion; discs 7", 10" and 12" at 33+1⁄3 rpm, 1st LP Columbia ML 4001 Milstein, Mendelssohn Violin Concerto |
| 1949 | Vinyl 45 record (RCA) | Analog 45 rpm vinyl 7" disk, first 45 pressed "PeeWee the Piccolo" RCA 47-0147 Indianapolis |
| 1950 | Tefifon | Electro-mechanical analog, vinyl belt housed in a cassette, used an embossing technique using a stylus to imprint the information, was the first thing to resemble a modern audio cassette |
| 16 2/3rpm vinyl record | Mechanical analog; lateral groove, horizontal stylus motion, played at half the regular speed of an LP | |
| 1951 | Minifon P55 | Analog, magnetic wire on reel, 30 cm/s or about 11.8 ips was quickly adopted by many governments as being the ultimate "spy" recorder of its day |
| 1957 | Stereophonic vinyl record | Analog, with pre-emphasis and other equalization techniques. Combination lateral/vertical stylus motion with each channel encoded 45 degrees to the vertical |
| Dictet | Analog, 1⁄4 tape, 2.48 in/s, (3-inch reels housed 5.875 × 3 × .4375 inch cassette), developed by the Dictaphone Corp | |
| 1958 | RCA tape cartridge (Sound Tape) (Magazine Loading Cartridge) | Analog, 1⁄4 inch wide tape (stereo & mono), 3+3⁄4 in/s & 1.875 in/s, one of the first attempts to offer reel-to-reel tape recording quality in a convenient format for the consumer market |
| 1959 | NAB Cart Tape (Fidelipac) | Analog, 1⁄4 inch wide tape in cartridge, 7+1⁄2 in/s & 15 in/s, Introduced in 1959 by Collins Radio, the cart tape format was designed for use by radio broadcasters to play commercials, bumpers and announcements |
| Synchrofax Sound Paper | Magnetic coating on paper. | |
| 1961 | Orrtronic Tapette. | Analog, endless tape cartridge. |
| 1962 | 4-Track (Muntz Stereo-Pak) | Analog, 1⁄4-inch-wide (6.4 mm) tape, 3+3⁄4 in/s, endless-loop cartridge |
| 1963 | Compact cassette | Analog, with bias. 0.15 inches (3.81 mm) tape, 1+7⁄8 ips. 1970: introduced Dolby noise reduction |
| 1964 | Sanyo Micro Pack 35 Channel Master 6546 Westinghouse H29R1 |
1⁄4 inch wide tape housed in a transparent cartridge measuring 2.6 × 2.9 × 1.9 inches, tape was stored on two reels residing atop one another, keeping the cartridge compact |
| Sabamobil | A cartridge format for embedding and easy handling usual 3-inch-tape-reels with 1⁄4 inch tape, compatible to reel-to-reel audio recording in 3+3⁄4 ips. | |
| 1965 | 8-Track (Stereo-8) | Analog, 1⁄4 inch wide tape, 3+3⁄4 in/s, endless-loop cartridge |
| DC-International cassette system | Analog cassette format introduced by Grundig, Telefunken and Blaupunkt: 120 × 77 × 12 mm cassette with 1⁄4 inch wide tape run at 5.08 cm per second. | |
| 1966 | PlayTape | Analog, 1⁄8 inch wide tape, endless-loop cartridge, introduced by Frank Stanton |
| 1969 | Microcassette | Analog, 1⁄8 inch wide tape, used generally for note taking, mostly mono, some stereo (developed in the early '80s). 2.4 cm/s or 1.2 cm/s |
| Minicassette | Analog, 1⁄8 inch wide tape, used generally for note taking, 1.2 cm/s | |
| 1970 | Quadraphonic 8-Track (Quad-8) (Q8) | Analog, 1⁄4 inch wide tape, 3+3⁄4 in/s, 4-channel stereo, endless-loop cartridge |
| 1971 | Quadraphonic Vinyl Record (CD-4) (SQ Matrix) | Analog, introduced by CBS Records for matrix and RCA / JVC for CD-4
Recorded two tracks on both stereo channels, requiring a decoder to hear all four tracks. Despite this, the format is playable on any LP turntable. |
| 1971 | HiPac | Analog, a successor of the 1966 PlayTape, using tape width of the 1963 Compact Cassette, Japan only |
| 1976 | Dolby Stereo cinema surround sound | Analog |
| Elcaset | Analog, name comes from "L-Cassette/Large Cassette" | |
| 1982 | Compact Disc (CD-DA) | Digital. Linear PCM (LPCM) |
| 1986 | High Definition Compatible Digital (HDCD) | Digital. Redbook compatible physical CD containing 20-24 bit information (uses linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM)) |
| 1987 | Digital Audio Tape (DAT) | Digital.
This audio format famously caused controversy among recording companies when released due to the potential of perfect digital copies to increase piracy |
| 1988 | AIFF (file format) | Digital. Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) |
| 1992 | Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) | Digital, 1⁄8 inch wide tape, 1+7⁄8 in/s, introduced by Philips and Matsushita in late 1992, marketed as the successor to the standard analog compact cassette |
| WAV (file format) | Digital. Named after the waveform created by a sound wave. | |
| Dolby Digital Cinema Sound | Digital. Also known as Dolby Stereo Digital until 1994. | |
| MiniDisc (MD) | Digital. Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding (ATRAC) | |
| 1993 | DTS, SDDS, MP3 (file formats) | Digital. Digital Theatre System (DTS), Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS), MPEG-1 Audio Layer III (MP3) |
| 1994 | TwinVQ | Digital. |
| 1995 | RealAudio | |
| 1997 | DTS-CD | Digital. DTS audio |
| 1998 | WavPack (file format) | Digital. PCM, lossless compression (2002 hybrid compression) (2016 DSD support) |
| 1999 | DVD-Audio | Digital. Including Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP), Linear PCM (LPCM), Dolby Digital (AC-3) and Digital Theatre System (DTS) |
| Super Audio CD (SACD) | Digital. Direct Stream Digital | |
| WMA (file format) | Digital. Windows Media Audio | |
| TTA (file format) | Digital. The True Audio Lossless Codec. | |
| 2000 | FLAC (file format) | Digital. Free Lossless Audio Codec (open, non-proprietary, patent-and-royalty-free) |
| Ogg Vorbis (file format) | Digital. Vorbis compressed audio format (open, non-proprietary, patent-and-royalty-free) | |
| DSDIFF (file format) | Digital. DSD, optional DST compression | |
| APE (file format) | Digital. Monkey's Audio | |
| 2001 | AAC (file format) | Digital. Advanced Audio Coding |
| 2002 | WSD (file format) | Digital. DSD |
| 2004 | ALE or ALAC (file formats) | Digital. Apple Lossless |
| 2005 | DSF (file format) | Digital. DSD |
| 2008 | slotMusic | Digital. Usually at 320 kbit/s MP3 on microSD or microSDHC. |
| Blu-spec CD | Digital. PCM | |
| 2012 | Opus (file format) | Digital. Opus lossy audio coding format (IETF standard, open, non-proprietary, royalty-free) |
| 2016 | Blu-Ray HFPA | Digital. Audio-only version of Blu-Ray. |
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Timeline of audio formats”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Edison and phonograph edit1.jpg by Levin C. Handy (per http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cwpbh.04326), Public domain
- CylinderRecordsWPackage.jpg by Unknown author, Public domain
- Piano Roll Open.png by Jason Curtis, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Music Box discs.jpg by Jason Curtis, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Brownwaxcylinders.jpg by 78.26 at English Wikipedia, CC0
- Dictaphone sylinder.jpg by Roger Berg / Holmestrand Aluminium museum, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Pathé Cylinder.png by Jason Curtis, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Record, sound (AM 1999.155.94-4).jpg by HMV; Parlophone Records, CC BY 4.0
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