Recording history: When did Hifi happen?

[Bonteburg]

This has been puzzling me for some time - when you hear old newsreels from the 30s and 40s you can tell it's old from the overdriven, middy sound of it (goes for old films and musical recordings too) -or so I thought.

Just the other day I was listening to this Jazz recording and put it in the early 60s only to find it was from 1946!

I was wondering was there a major quantum leap in recording technology ca 1945-50 that made high quality recordings possible all of a sudden, or is stuff from earlier times simply the worse for wear?

Would be interesting to learn what breakthrough happened, and when (if indeed there was one).

Marco

[jupiter8]

One could suspect the end of World War II had a big impact on developing new products. Possibly also they develop new technologies during the war that came to civilian use later.If that actually is the case i don't know.

[duncanparsons]

Churchill was known for strutting around the war office wearing an iPod, but it was steeped in secrecy, and only came to light for civilian use a few years ago when Steve Jobs happened to visit the Imperial War Museum and saw some blueprints that had just come out of the 50 year rule...

and the rest, as they say, is history

DSP

[duncanparsons]

wrt OP - no idea!

DSP

[BERFAB]

HI FI stereos and FM radio transmissions for music became the vogue in the early 1960's AFAIK. This was aided by the proliferation of solid state technology coming from the new hi-tech industry in Japan which the West had helped set up as a comeback industry following their defeat in WWII.

Real innovations in recorded material and studio technique date to the late 50's with innovations from Les Paul and others.

This is all off the top of my head, but a quick search will nail this down more accurately.

-B

[shamann]

The "hi-fi" fad began in the late 40s, and was most prominent in the 50s. The audio technophilia behind the craze was driven initially by men who had had extensive experience with audio equipment in the army during the war. The seminal hi-fi recording was Harry Revel's "Music out of the Moon" from 1947. It sort set the standard for all those exotica/lounge/space age bachelor pad albums in the 50s.

An excellent book on the subject is Timothy Taylor's "Strange Sounds." Also worth checking Wikipedia for a bit of background:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fidelity

[nuffink]

The Quad Electrostatic Loudspeaker (1957) and Williamson Amplifier (1947) can stand comparison with the best equipment available today. I suspect that the greatest advance in the period you're talking about is down to tape and tape recorders, possibly the Studer A37?

[shamann]

Oops, sorry, I didn't really read the whole original post. I was talking about the home hifi fad rather than just high fidelity.

But the development of the commercial reel-to-reel is probably the turning point, circa 1947-48 by Jack Mullin/Ampex.

[Bonteburg]

heh - thanks all, yeah that was along the lines of what I was thinking of (minus all the names and dates obviously).

[fred2112]

Happen with abbey road !
the CD and the studio !

[pattonfreak1]

august 5th 1962

[kevvvvv]

The Leek Point One amp was a big breakthrough in hifi as it was the first popular selling amp to have less than 0.1% total harmonic distortion

Here's a pic of a 1945 model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEAK

Here is wiki's history of hifi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fidelity#History It talks about how woofers and tweeter emerged in the 30s - fascinating stuff

When I was a student we used to sit and drool for weeks over hifi audio separates. We swore by Celestion speakers and craved a pair of KEFs with their semi-eliptical woofers

[Bonteburg]

thanks kevvvvv!