Analog recording is a technique used for the recording of
analog signals which, among many possibilities, allows analog audio for later playback.
Analog audio recording began with mechanical systems such as the
phonautograph
The phonautograph is the earliest known device for recording sound. Previously, tracings had been obtained of the sound-producing vibratory motions of tuning forks and other objects by physical contact with them, but not of actual sound waves ...
and
phonograph
A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...
. Later, electronic techniques such as
wire
Overhead power cabling. The conductor consists of seven strands of steel (centre, high tensile strength), surrounded by four outer layers of aluminium (high conductivity). Sample diameter 40 mm
A wire is a flexible strand of metal.
Wire is c ...
and
tape recording
An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present ...
were developed.
Analog recording methods store
analog signals directly in or on the media. The signal may be stored as a physical texture on a
phonograph record
A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts nea ...
, or a fluctuation in the
field strength In physics, field strength means the ''magnitude'' of a vector-valued field (e.g., in volts per meter, V/m, for an electric field ''E'').
For example, an electromagnetic field results in both electric field strength and magnetic field strength ...
of a
magnetic recording
Magnetic storage or magnetic recording is the storage of data on a magnetized medium. Magnetic storage uses different patterns of magnetisation in a magnetizable material to store data and is a form of non-volatile memory. The information is ac ...
. Analog transmission methods use analog signals to distribute audio content. These are in contrast to
digital audio where an analog signal is
sampled
Sample or samples may refer to:
Base meaning
* Sample (statistics), a subset of a population – complete data set
* Sample (signal), a digital discrete sample of a continuous analog signal
* Sample (material), a specimen or small quantity of so ...
and
quantized to produce a
digital signal which is represented, stored and transmitted as
discrete number
In mathematics and statistics, a quantitative variable may be continuous or discrete if they are typically obtained by ''measuring'' or ''counting'', respectively. If it can take on two particular real values such that it can also take on all ...
s.
See also
*
Comparison of analog and digital recording
Sound can be recorded and stored and played using either digital or analog techniques. Both techniques introduce errors and distortions in the sound, and these methods can be systematically compared. Musicians and listeners have argued over the ...
*
History of sound recording
The history of sound recording - which has progressed in waves, driven by the invention and commercial introduction of new technologies — can be roughly divided into four main periods:
* The Acoustic era (1877–1925)
* The Electrical er ...
*
Timeline of audio formats
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 w ...
References
Film and video technology
Film and video terminology
Mass media technology
Recording
Television terminology
Video storage
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