. The term is applied to both the physical recording media and the recording formats of the
, but its wider use usually refers to the physical method used to store the data.
Music is recorded and distributed using a variety of audio formats, some of which store additional information.
| Year |
Media formats |
Recording formats |
| 1877 |
Phonograph cylinderPhonograph cylinders were the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity , these cylinder shaped objects had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which could be reproduced when the cylinder was...
|
Mechanical analog; "hill-and-dale" grooves, vertical stylus motion |
| 1883 |
Music roll A piano roll is a music storage medium used to operate a player piano, piano player or reproducing piano. A piano roll is a continuous roll of paper with perforations punched into it. The peforations represent note control data...
|
Mechanical digital (automated musical instruments) |
| 1895 |
Gramophone recordA gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
|
Mechanical analog; lateral grooves, horizontal stylus motion |
| 1898 |
Wire recording Wire recording is a type of analog audio storage in which a magnetic recording is made on thin steel or stainless steel wire.The wire is pulled rapidly across a recording head which magnetizes each point along the wire in accordance with the intensity and polarity of the electrical audio signal...
|
Analog; magnetization; no "bias" Tape bias is the term for two phenomena, DC bias and AC bias, that improve the fidelity of analogue magnetic tape sound recordings. DC bias is the addition of a direct current to the audio signal that is being recorded. AC bias is the addition of an inaudible high-frequency signal to the audio...
|
| 1925 |
Electrical cut record |
Mechanical analog; electrically cut from amplified microphone signal, lateral grooves, horizontal stylus motion, discs at 7", 10", 12", most at 78 rpm |
| 1930s |
Reel-to-Reel, Magnetic Tape |
Analog; magnetization; "bias" dramatically increases linearity/fidelity, tape speed at 30 ips, later 15 ips with NAB equalization; refined speeds: 7½ ips, 3¾ ips, 1⅞ ips |
| Electrical transcriptions |
Mechanical analog; electrically cut from amplified microphone signal, high fidelity High fidelity—or hi-fi—reproduction is a term used by home stereo listeners and home audio enthusiasts to refer to high-quality reproduction of sound or images, to distinguish it from the poorer quality sound produced by inexpensive audio equipment...
sound, lateral or vertical grooves, horizontal or vertical stylus motion, most discs 16" at 33⅓ rpm |
| 1948 |
Vinyl Record |
Analog, with preemphasis and other equalization techniques (LP, RIAA); lateral grooves, horizontal stylus motion; discs at 7" (most 45 rpm), 10" and 12" (most 33⅓ rpm) |
| 1957 |
Stereophonic Vinyl Record |
Analog, with preemphasis and other equalization techniques. Combination lateral/vertical stylus motion with each channel encoded 45 degrees to the vertical. |
| 1962 |
4-Track (Stereo-Pak) |
Analog, 1/4 in tape, 3¾ in/s, endless loop cartridge. |
| 1963 |
Compact CassetteThe Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. It was designed originally for dictation, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel...
|
Analog, with bias, preemphasis, 0.15 inches (3.8 mm) tape, 1⅞ in/s. 1970: introduced Dolby noise reduction. |
| 1965 |
8-Track (Stereo-8) |
Analog, ¼ inch wide tape, 3¾ in/s, endless loop cartridge. |
| 1969 |
MicrocassetteA Microcassette is an audio storage medium introduced by Olympus in 1969. It uses the same width of magnetic tape as the Compact Cassette but in a much smaller container. By using thinner tape and half or a quarter the tape speed, microcassettes can offer comparable recording time to the compact...
|
Analog, ⅛ inch wide tape, used generally for notetaking, mostly mono, some stereo. 2.4 cm/s or 1.2 cm/s. |
MinicassetteThe Mini-Cassette, often written minicassette, is a tape cassette format introduced by Philips in 1967. It is used primarily in dictation machines and was also employed as a data storage for the Philips P2000 home computer...
|
Analog, ⅛ inch wide tape, used generally for notetaking, 1.2 cm/s |
| 1970 |
Quadraphonic Quadraphonic sound – the most widely used early term for what is now called 4.0 surround sound – uses four channels in which speakers are positioned at the four corners of the listening space, reproducing signals that are independent of one another...
8-Track (Quad-8) (Q8) |
Analog, ¼ inch wide tape, 3¾ in/s, 4 Channel Stereo, endless loop cartridge. |
| 1971 |
Quadraphonic Quadraphonic sound – the most widely used early term for what is now called 4.0 surround sound – uses four channels in which speakers are positioned at the four corners of the listening space, reproducing signals that are independent of one another...
Vinyl Record (CD-4) (SQ Matrix) |
Analog. |
| 1975 |
Betamax Digital Audio |
Dolby Stereo Dolby Stereo, is the trade mark that Dolby Laboratories used for the various analogue stereo cinema sound formats that they produced.Two basic systems used this name. The first was the 'Dolby SVA' system used with optical soundtracks on 35mm film...
cinema surround sound |
| 1976 |
ElcasetElcaset was a short-lived audio format created by Sony in 1976, building on an idea introduced 20 years earlier in the RCA tape cartridge.In 1976, it was widely felt that the compact cassette was never likely to be capable of the same levels of performance that was available from reel-to-reel...
|
Analog. |
| 1978 |
Laserdisc LaserDisc was a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium. Initially licensed, sold, and marketed as MCA DiscoVision in North America in 1978, the technology was previously referred to interally as Optical Videodisc System, Reflective Optical Videodisc, Laser Optical...
|
Digital. |
| 1982 |
Compact DiscThe Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
(CD-DA) |
Digital. PCM |
| 1985 |
|
Audio Interchange File Format Audio Interchange File Format is an audio file format standard used for storing sound data for personal computers and other electronic audio devices...
(AIFF) |
| 1985 |
|
Sound Designer (by DigidesignAvid Audio is an American digital audio technology company. It was founded in 1984 by Peter Gotcher and Evan Brooks. The company began as a project to raise money for the founders' band, selling EPROM chips for drum machines. It is a subsidiary of Avid Technology, and during 2010 the Digidesign...
) |
| 1986 |
High Definition Compatible DigitalHigh Definition Compatible Digital, or HDCD is a patented encode-decode process, now owned by Microsoft, that improves the audio quality of standard Redbook audio CDs, while retaining backward compatibility with existing Compact disc players....
(HDCD) |
Digital. Redbook compatible physical CD containing 20–24 bit information. |
| 1987 |
Digital Audio TapeDigital Audio Tape is a signal recording and playback medium developed by Sony and introduced in 1987. In appearance it is similar to a compact audio cassette, using 4 mm magnetic tape enclosed in a protective shell, but is roughly half the size at 73 mm × 54 mm × 10.5 mm. As...
(DAT) |
Digital. |
| 1991 |
MiniDiscThe disc is permanently housed in a cartridge with a sliding door, similar to the casing of a 3.5" floppy disk. This shutter is opened automatically by a mechanism upon insertion. The audio discs can either be recordable or premastered. Recordable MiniDiscs use a magneto-optical system to record...
(MD) |
Digital. Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding (ATRAC) |
| 1992 |
Digital Compact CassetteDigital Compact Cassette was a magnetic tape sound recording format introduced by Philips and Matsushita in late 1992 and pitched as a successor to the standard analog cassette. It was also a direct competitor to Sony's MiniDisc but neither format toppled the then ubiquitous analog cassette...
(DCC) |
Digital. |
|
WAVEformWaveform Audio File Format , is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs...
(WAV)
Dolby DigitalDolby Digital is the name for audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. It was originally called Dolby Stereo Digital until 1994. Except for Dolby TrueHD, the audio compression is lossy. The first use of Dolby Digital was to provide digital sound in cinemas from 35mm film prints...
surround cinema sound |
| 1993 |
|
Digital Theatre System (DTS)
Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS)
MPEG-1 Audio Layer IIIMPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
|
| 1997 |
DVDA DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
|
Dolby Digital Dolby Digital is the name for audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. It was originally called Dolby Stereo Digital until 1994. Except for Dolby TrueHD, the audio compression is lossy. The first use of Dolby Digital was to provide digital sound in cinemas from 35mm film prints...
|
| DTS-CD |
DTS Audio |
| 1999 |
DVD-AudioDVD-Audio is a digital format for delivering high-fidelity audio content on a DVD. DVD-Audio is not intended to be a video delivery format and is not the same as video DVDs containing concert films or music videos....
|
Digital. |
Super Audio CDSuper Audio CD is a high-resolution, read-only optical disc for audio storage. Sony and Philips Electronics jointly developed the technology, and publicized it in 1999. It is designated as the Scarlet Book standard. Sony and Philips previously collaborated to define the Compact Disc standard...
(SACD) |
Direct Stream Digital Direct-Stream Digital is the trademark name used by Sony and Philips for their system of recreating audible signals which uses pulse-density modulation encoding, a technology to store audio signals on digital storage media which is used for the Super Audio CD .The signal is stored as delta-sigma...
|
|
Windows Media AudioWindows Media Audio is an audio data compression technology developed by Microsoft. The name can be used to refer to its audio file format or its audio codecs. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs...
(WMA) |
|
The True Audio Lossless Codec True Audio is a free software, real-time lossless audio codec, based on adaptive prognostic filters.Also, .tta is the generic extension to filenames of audio files created by True Audio codec.- Codec overview :...
(TTA) |
| 2000 |
|
Free Lossless Audio CodecFLAC is a codec which allows digital audio to be losslessly compressed such that file size is reduced without any information being lost...
(FLAC) |
| 2001 |
|
Advanced audio coding Advanced Audio Coding is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates....
(AAC) |
| 2002 |
|
Ogg Vorbis |
| 2003 |
DualDiscDualDisc was a type of double-sided optical disc product developed by a group of record companies including EMI Music, Universal Music Group, Sony/BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and 5.1 Entertainment Group and later under the aegis of the Recording Industry Association of America...
|
Digital. |
| 2004 |
|
Apple Lossless Apple Lossless Apple Lossless Apple Lossless (also known as ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec), or ALE (Apple Lossless Encoder) is an audio codec developed by Apple Inc. for lossless data compression of digital music. After initially being proprietary for many years, in late 2011 Apple open sourced...
(ALE or ALAC) |
| 2005 |
HD DVDHD DVD is a discontinued high-density optical disc format for storing data and high-definition video.Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD format...
|
Dolby TrueHD Dolby TrueHD is an advanced lossless multi-channel audio codec developed by Dolby Laboratories which is intended primarily for high-definition home-entertainment equipment such as Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD. It is the successor to the AC-3 Dolby Digital surround sound codec which was used as the...
, DTS-HD Master AudioDTS-HD Master Audio is a lossless audio codec created by Digital Theater System. It was previously known as DTS++. It is an extension of DTS which, when played back on devices which do not support the Master Audio or High Resolution extension, degrades to a "core" track which is lossy. DTS-HD...
|
|
OggPCM OggPCM is a data format which is used to encapsulate PCM audio data inside the Ogg container format. It is developed by Xiph.Org Foundation. Like WAV, and unlike MP3 or Vorbis, it deals with uncompressed digital sound, making the format lossless. Like Vorbis, it could be used in separation from the...
|
| 2006 |
Blu-ray DiscBlu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
|
Dolby TrueHD Dolby TrueHD is an advanced lossless multi-channel audio codec developed by Dolby Laboratories which is intended primarily for high-definition home-entertainment equipment such as Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD. It is the successor to the AC-3 Dolby Digital surround sound codec which was used as the...
, DTS-HD Master AudioDTS-HD Master Audio is a lossless audio codec created by Digital Theater System. It was previously known as DTS++. It is an extension of DTS which, when played back on devices which do not support the Master Audio or High Resolution extension, degrades to a "core" track which is lossy. DTS-HD...
|
| 2008 |
slotMusic slotMusic is a type of microSD memory card developed by SanDisk preloaded with music in MP3 format. They were first available at Wal-Mart and Best Buy stores in the United States in October 2008. The current selection of songs comes from Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and EMI...
|
320kb/s MP3 on microSD or microSDHC |