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Recording medium comparison

Overview

This article details a comparison of audio recording media.

The typical duration of a vinyl album was about 15 to 25 minutes per side, except classical music and spoken word recordings which could extend to over 30 minutes on a side. If a side exceeds the average time, the maximum groove amplitude is reduced to make room for the additional program material. This can cause hiss in the sound from lower quality amplifiers when the volume is turned up to compensate for the lower recorded level.

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This article details a comparison of audio recording media.

Format	Type	Typical length
Cylinders	Analog	around 2 - 4 minutes
78 record	Analog	around 3 - 5 minutes per side
45 record	Analog	often around 4 minutes (EP Extended play An extended play is a vinyl record, CD, or music download which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as an LP. Usually, a CD single has around 10–28 minutes of music, an EP has up to 36 minutes, and an album generally has 30–80 minutes. Mini-LPs generally contain 20–30... : 7 minutes) per side, up to 6 per side, in some cases even a few minutes longer.
LP record LP album Long-playing record albums are 33⅓ rpm vinyl gramophone records , generally either 10 or 12 inches in diameter. They were first introduced in 1948, and served as a primary release format for recorded music until the compact disc began to significantly displace them by 1988...	Analog	up to 30 minutes per side, though some LPs have a longer time by a few minutes.
Audio cassette	Analog	usually 30 or 45 minutes per side, 60 minutes per side have also been sold although the tape is more prone to stretching or breaking.
8-Track 8-track cartridge Stereo 8, commonly known as the eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, or eight-track, is a magnetic tape sound recording technology, popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. Stereo 8 was created in 1964 by a consortium led by Bill Lear of Lear Jet Corporation, along with Ampex, Ford Motor...	Analog	up to 100 minutes, often 45 to 80
Compact disc Compact Disc A Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store sound recordings exclusively, but later it also allowed the preservation of other types of data. Audio CDs have been commercially available since October 1982...	Digital	Earlier discs: up to 74 minutes (or up to 650 MB Megabyte The megabyte is an SI-multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission and is equal to 10⁶ bytes. However, due to historical usage in computer-related fields it is still often used to represent 2²⁰ bytes. In rare cases, it is used to mean... of data files)
	Digital	Later discs: up to 80 minutes (or up to 700 MB Megabyte The megabyte is an SI-multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission and is equal to 10⁶ bytes. However, due to historical usage in computer-related fields it is still often used to represent 2²⁰ bytes. In rare cases, it is used to mean... of data files)
Recordable discs CD-R A CD-R is a variation of the Compact Disc invented by Philips and Sony. CD-R is a Write Once Read Many optical medium, though the whole disk does not have to be entirely written in the same session....	Digital	Up to 99 minutes, though unlikely to be reliable after 90 minutes due to mistracking
Reel-to-Reel	Analog	1.5 hours (both sides) if recorded at 7.5 inches per second (ips) on a standard 1800 ft reel. Professionals record at 30 ips on 3600 ft reels that will fit 22.5 minutes (one side only). A 3600 ft reel can hold up to 48 hours if recorded in mono (4 sides) at 15/16 ips.
Minidisc MiniDisc A MiniDisc is a magneto-optical disc-based data storage device initially intended for storage of up to 80 minutes of digitized audio...	Digital	Earlier discs: 74 minutes up to 296 minutes, dependent upon compression used.
	Digital	Later discs: 80 minutes up to 320 minutes, dependent upon compression used.
Hi-MD Hi-MD In January 2004, Sony announced the Hi-MD media storage format as a further development of the MiniDisc-Format. With its release in later 2004 came the ability to use newly-developed, high-capacity 1 gigabyte Hi-MD discs, sporting the same dimensions as regular MiniDiscs.- Main features of Hi-MD :*...	Digital	Up to 13 hours on a standard 80-minute MiniDisc.
	Digital	Up to 45 hours on a 1Gb Hi-MD (MiniDisc)
Digital audio player Digital audio player A digital audio player, sometimes referred to as an MP3 player, is a consumer electronic device that has the primary function of storing, organizing and playing audio files...	Digital	Roughly 186 hours of playback per 10 GiB Gibibyte The gibibyte is a standards-based binary multiple of the byte, a unit of digital information storage... , assuming an average bitrate of 128 kbit/s. Roughly 372 hours with 64 kbit/s and roughly 74 hours with 320 kbit/s.
DVD DVD DVD, also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc,is an optical disc storage media format, and was founded in 1995. Its main uses are video and data storage...	Digital	around 8.5 hours per layer (4.7 Gb), with a maximum of two layers per side, which roughly equals 35 hours on a dual layered, two sided disc (can change due to compression).
SACD Super Audio CD Super Audio CD is a high-resolution, read-only optical audio disc format developed by Sony and Philips Electronics, the same companies that created the Compact Disc. SACD is designed to provide high-resolution audio in both stereo and surround sound modes...	Digital	Hybrid: A "Red Book Red Book (audio CD standard) Red Book is the standard for audio CDs . It is named after one of a set of color-bound books that contain the technical specifications for all CD and CD-ROM formats.... " layer compatible with most legacy Compact Disc players, dubbed the "CD layer," and a 4.7 GB SACD layer, dubbed the "HD layer."
		Single-layer: Physically a DVD-5 DVD DVD DVD, also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc,is an optical disc storage media format, and was founded in 1995. Its main uses are video and data storage... , a single-layer SACD includes a 4.7 GB HD layer with no CD layer.
		Dual-layer: Physically a DVD-9 DVD DVD DVD, also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc,is an optical disc storage media format, and was founded in 1995. Its main uses are video and data storage... , a dual-layer SACD includes two HD layers totalling 8.5 GB, with no CD layer.
HD DVD HD DVD HD DVD is a discontinued high-density optical disc format for storing data and high-definition video.Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisaged to be the successor to the standard DVD format...	Digital	Single-layer: 15 GB
	Digital	Dual-layer capacity: 30 GB
Blu-ray	Digital	50 GB (23 Hours)
VHS VHS Video Home System, better known by its abbreviation VHS, was a video tape recording standard developed during the 1970s. It was released to the public during the latter half of the decade. During the late part of the 1970s and the early 1980s it formed one-half of the VHS vs Betamax war, which it... -tape	Analog	240 minutes for PAL PAL PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television encoding system used in broadcast television systems in large parts of the world. Other common analogue television systems are SECAM and NTSC. This page primarily discusses the colour encoding system... /SECAM SECAM SECAM, also written SÉCAM , is an analog color television system first used in France.... , 180 minutes for NTSC NTSC NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee is the analog television system used in most of the Americas, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Burma, and some Pacific island nations and territories . is also the name of the U.S. standardization body that developed the broadcast standard...
VHS-C VHS-C VHS-C is the compact VHS format introduced in 1982 and used primarily for consumer-grade compact camcorders. The format is based on the same videotape as is used in VHS, and can be played back in a standard VHS VCR with an adapter... -tape	Analog	45 minutes for PAL PAL PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television encoding system used in broadcast television systems in large parts of the world. Other common analogue television systems are SECAM and NTSC. This page primarily discusses the colour encoding system... /SECAM SECAM SECAM, also written SÉCAM , is an analog color television system first used in France.... , 40 minutes for NTSC NTSC NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee is the analog television system used in most of the Americas, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Burma, and some Pacific island nations and territories . is also the name of the U.S. standardization body that developed the broadcast standard...
DAT Digital Audio Tape Digital 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 the name suggests,... -tape	Digital	120 minutes
DCC Digital Compact Cassette Digital Compact Cassette is an obsolete magnetic tape sound recording format introduced by Philips and Matsushita in late 1992. Pitched as a successor to the standard analog cassette, and competitor to MiniDisc and Digital Audio Tape , it never became popular with the general public... -tape	Digital	105 minutes

The typical duration of a vinyl album was about 15 to 25 minutes per side, except classical music and spoken word recordings which could extend to over 30 minutes on a side. If a side exceeds the average time, the maximum groove amplitude is reduced to make room for the additional program material. This can cause hiss in the sound from lower quality amplifiers when the volume is turned up to compensate for the lower recorded level. An extreme example, Todd Rundgren

Todd Rundgren

Todd Harry Rundgren is an American musician, singer-songwriter and record producer.-Early career:Rundgren was born in Upper Darby, PA. He began his career in Woody's Truck Stop, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based group based on the model of Paul Butterfield Blues Band. However, he left the band to...

's Initiation
Initiation (album)
Initiation is the sixth album by Todd Rundgren, released in the summer of 1975. With this album, Rundgren fully embraced the synth prog sound he began exploring more in depth with Utopia...

LP, with 36 minutes of music on one side, has a "technical note" at the bottom of the inner sleeve: "if the sound does not seem loud enough on your system, try re-recording the music onto tape." The total of around 40–45 minutes often influenced the arrangement of tracks, with the preferred positions being the opening and closing tracks of each side.

Although the term EP was commonly used to describe a 7" single with more than two tracks, technically they were not different from a normal 7" single. The EP used reduced dynamic range and a smaller run-off groove area to extend the playing time. However, there are examples of singles, such as The Beatles

The Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960 who became one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed bands in the history of popular music...

' "Hey Jude

Hey Jude

"Hey Jude" is a song by the English rock band The Beatles, written by Paul McCartney but credited to Lennon/McCartney. Originally titled "Hey Jules", the ballad was written to comfort John Lennon's son Julian during his parents' divorce...

" or Queen

Queen (band)

Queen were an English rock band. Formed in London in 1970 following the demise of the band Smile, Queen consisted of vocalist Freddie Mercury, guitarist Brian May, bassist John Deacon and drummer Roger Taylor. The band became popular with audiences via their hit songs, live performances,...

's "Bohemian Rhapsody

Bohemian Rhapsody

"Bohemian Rhapsody" is a song by the British rock band Queen. It was written by Freddie Mercury for the band's 1975 album A Night at the Opera. "Bohemian Rhapsody" is in the style of a stream-of-consciousness nightmare that has unusual song structure, more akin to a classical rhapsody than popular...

", which were six minutes long or more. (in 1989, RCA released 'Dreamtime' by the band Love and Rockets

Love and Rockets

Love and Rockets may refer to:* Love and Rockets , a comic book series by Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez* Love and Rockets , an alternative rock band formed by members of Bauhaus, named after the comic...

, which clocked at 8:40). These longer recordings would require the same technical approach as an EP. The term EP has also been used for 10" 45 rpm records, typically containing a reduced number of tracks.

Vinyl albums had a large 12" album cover

Album cover

An album cover is the front of the packaging of a commercially-released audio recording product, or album. The term can refer to either the printed cardboard covers typically used to package sets of 10" and 12" 78 rpm records, single and sets of 12" LPs, sets of 45 rpm records , or the front-facing...

, which also allowed cover designers scope for imaginative designs, often including fold-outs and leaflets.

Audio format
Audio format
An audio format is a medium for storing sound and music. 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...
Audio storage
CardTalk
CardTalk
CardTalk is an inexpensive player for recordings on vinyl records. It consists of a flat piece of cardboard creased and folded into a modified triangle shape. The base has a nub to hold the record in place. The upper "arm" forms the "pointy" part the triangle and has a needle which is placed...
DJ
Magnetic cartridge
Magnetic cartridge
A magnetic cartridge is a transducer used for the playback of gramophone records on a turntable or phonograph. It converts mechanical vibrational energy from a stylus riding in a spiral record groove into an electrical signal that is subsequently amplified and then converted back to sound by a...
RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as Radio Corporation of America, was an electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. Currently, the RCA trademark is owned by the French conglomerate Thomson SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Thomson...
Record changer
Record changer
A record changer or autochanger is a device that plays multiple gramophone records in sequence without user intervention. Record changers first appeared in the late 1920s, and were common until the 1980s.-History:...
Record press
Record press
A record press is a machine for manufacturing vinyl records. It is essentially a hydraulic press with a closing force of 100 tons and is fitted with moulds. Labels and a vinyl pattie are placed in the mould cavity while the moulds are being steam-heated with an ideal steam pressure of 140-170psi...
Sound recording
Turntablism
Turntablism
Turntablism is the art of manipulating sounds and creating music using phonograph turntables and a DJ mixer. The word 'turntablist' was coined in 1995 by DJ Babu to describe the difference between a DJ who just plays records, and one who performs by touching and moving the records, stylus and mixer...
Unusual types of gramophone records
Unusual types of gramophone records
The overwhelming majority of records manufactured have been of certain sizes , playback speeds , and appearance...
Voyager Golden Record
Voyager Golden Record
The Voyager Golden Record is a phonograph record included in the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977. It contains sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. It is intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or far future humans, that may find it...
Vinyl Emulation Software
Vinyl Emulation Software
Vinyl emulation software allows the user to physically manipulate the playback of digital audio files on a computer using the turntables as an interface, thus preserving the hands-on 'feel' of deejaying with vinyl while allowing playback of audio recordings not available in phonograph form...
RIAA equalization
RIAA equalization
RIAA equalization is a specification for the correct playback of gramophone records, established by the Recording Industry Association of America...
Children's gramophone records

This article details a comparison of audio recording media.

Format	Type	Typical length
Cylinders	Analog	around 2 - 4 minutes
78 record	Analog	around 3 - 5 minutes per side
45 record	Analog	often around 4 minutes (EP Extended play An extended play is a vinyl record, CD, or music download which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as an LP. Usually, a CD single has around 10–28 minutes of music, an EP has up to 36 minutes, and an album generally has 30–80 minutes. Mini-LPs generally contain 20–30... : 7 minutes) per side, up to 6 per side, in some cases even a few minutes longer.
LP record LP album Long-playing record albums are 33⅓ rpm vinyl gramophone records , generally either 10 or 12 inches in diameter. They were first introduced in 1948, and served as a primary release format for recorded music until the compact disc began to significantly displace them by 1988...	Analog	up to 30 minutes per side, though some LPs have a longer time by a few minutes.
Audio cassette	Analog	usually 30 or 45 minutes per side, 60 minutes per side have also been sold although the tape is more prone to stretching or breaking.
8-Track 8-track cartridge Stereo 8, commonly known as the eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, or eight-track, is a magnetic tape sound recording technology, popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. Stereo 8 was created in 1964 by a consortium led by Bill Lear of Lear Jet Corporation, along with Ampex, Ford Motor...	Analog	up to 100 minutes, often 45 to 80
Compact disc Compact Disc A Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store sound recordings exclusively, but later it also allowed the preservation of other types of data. Audio CDs have been commercially available since October 1982...	Digital	Earlier discs: up to 74 minutes (or up to 650 MB Megabyte The megabyte is an SI-multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission and is equal to 10⁶ bytes. However, due to historical usage in computer-related fields it is still often used to represent 2²⁰ bytes. In rare cases, it is used to mean... of data files)
	Digital	Later discs: up to 80 minutes (or up to 700 MB Megabyte The megabyte is an SI-multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission and is equal to 10⁶ bytes. However, due to historical usage in computer-related fields it is still often used to represent 2²⁰ bytes. In rare cases, it is used to mean... of data files)
Recordable discs CD-R A CD-R is a variation of the Compact Disc invented by Philips and Sony. CD-R is a Write Once Read Many optical medium, though the whole disk does not have to be entirely written in the same session....	Digital	Up to 99 minutes, though unlikely to be reliable after 90 minutes due to mistracking
Reel-to-Reel	Analog	1.5 hours (both sides) if recorded at 7.5 inches per second (ips) on a standard 1800 ft reel. Professionals record at 30 ips on 3600 ft reels that will fit 22.5 minutes (one side only). A 3600 ft reel can hold up to 48 hours if recorded in mono (4 sides) at 15/16 ips.
Minidisc MiniDisc A MiniDisc is a magneto-optical disc-based data storage device initially intended for storage of up to 80 minutes of digitized audio...	Digital	Earlier discs: 74 minutes up to 296 minutes, dependent upon compression used.
	Digital	Later discs: 80 minutes up to 320 minutes, dependent upon compression used.
Hi-MD Hi-MD In January 2004, Sony announced the Hi-MD media storage format as a further development of the MiniDisc-Format. With its release in later 2004 came the ability to use newly-developed, high-capacity 1 gigabyte Hi-MD discs, sporting the same dimensions as regular MiniDiscs.- Main features of Hi-MD :*...	Digital	Up to 13 hours on a standard 80-minute MiniDisc.
	Digital	Up to 45 hours on a 1Gb Hi-MD (MiniDisc)
Digital audio player Digital audio player A digital audio player, sometimes referred to as an MP3 player, is a consumer electronic device that has the primary function of storing, organizing and playing audio files...	Digital	Roughly 186 hours of playback per 10 GiB Gibibyte The gibibyte is a standards-based binary multiple of the byte, a unit of digital information storage... , assuming an average bitrate of 128 kbit/s. Roughly 372 hours with 64 kbit/s and roughly 74 hours with 320 kbit/s.
DVD DVD DVD, also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc,is an optical disc storage media format, and was founded in 1995. Its main uses are video and data storage...	Digital	around 8.5 hours per layer (4.7 Gb), with a maximum of two layers per side, which roughly equals 35 hours on a dual layered, two sided disc (can change due to compression).
SACD Super Audio CD Super Audio CD is a high-resolution, read-only optical audio disc format developed by Sony and Philips Electronics, the same companies that created the Compact Disc. SACD is designed to provide high-resolution audio in both stereo and surround sound modes...	Digital	Hybrid: A "Red Book Red Book (audio CD standard) Red Book is the standard for audio CDs . It is named after one of a set of color-bound books that contain the technical specifications for all CD and CD-ROM formats.... " layer compatible with most legacy Compact Disc players, dubbed the "CD layer," and a 4.7 GB SACD layer, dubbed the "HD layer."
		Single-layer: Physically a DVD-5 DVD DVD DVD, also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc,is an optical disc storage media format, and was founded in 1995. Its main uses are video and data storage... , a single-layer SACD includes a 4.7 GB HD layer with no CD layer.
		Dual-layer: Physically a DVD-9 DVD DVD DVD, also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc,is an optical disc storage media format, and was founded in 1995. Its main uses are video and data storage... , a dual-layer SACD includes two HD layers totalling 8.5 GB, with no CD layer.
HD DVD HD DVD HD DVD is a discontinued high-density optical disc format for storing data and high-definition video.Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisaged to be the successor to the standard DVD format...	Digital	Single-layer: 15 GB
	Digital	Dual-layer capacity: 30 GB
Blu-ray	Digital	50 GB (23 Hours)
VHS VHS Video Home System, better known by its abbreviation VHS, was a video tape recording standard developed during the 1970s. It was released to the public during the latter half of the decade. During the late part of the 1970s and the early 1980s it formed one-half of the VHS vs Betamax war, which it... -tape	Analog	240 minutes for PAL PAL PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television encoding system used in broadcast television systems in large parts of the world. Other common analogue television systems are SECAM and NTSC. This page primarily discusses the colour encoding system... /SECAM SECAM SECAM, also written SÉCAM , is an analog color television system first used in France.... , 180 minutes for NTSC NTSC NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee is the analog television system used in most of the Americas, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Burma, and some Pacific island nations and territories . is also the name of the U.S. standardization body that developed the broadcast standard...
VHS-C VHS-C VHS-C is the compact VHS format introduced in 1982 and used primarily for consumer-grade compact camcorders. The format is based on the same videotape as is used in VHS, and can be played back in a standard VHS VCR with an adapter... -tape	Analog	45 minutes for PAL PAL PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television encoding system used in broadcast television systems in large parts of the world. Other common analogue television systems are SECAM and NTSC. This page primarily discusses the colour encoding system... /SECAM SECAM SECAM, also written SÉCAM , is an analog color television system first used in France.... , 40 minutes for NTSC NTSC NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee is the analog television system used in most of the Americas, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Burma, and some Pacific island nations and territories . is also the name of the U.S. standardization body that developed the broadcast standard...
DAT Digital Audio Tape Digital 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 the name suggests,... -tape	Digital	120 minutes
DCC Digital Compact Cassette Digital Compact Cassette is an obsolete magnetic tape sound recording format introduced by Philips and Matsushita in late 1992. Pitched as a successor to the standard analog cassette, and competitor to MiniDisc and Digital Audio Tape , it never became popular with the general public... -tape	Digital	105 minutes

Todd Rundgren

The Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960 who became one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed bands in the history of popular music...

' "Hey Jude

Hey Jude

" or Queen

Queen (band)

's "Bohemian Rhapsody

Bohemian Rhapsody

", which were six minutes long or more. (in 1989, RCA released 'Dreamtime' by the band Love and Rockets

Love and Rockets

Album cover

, which also allowed cover designers scope for imaginative designs, often including fold-outs and leaflets.

Audio format
Audio format
An audio format is a medium for storing sound and music. 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...
Audio storage
CardTalk
CardTalk
CardTalk is an inexpensive player for recordings on vinyl records. It consists of a flat piece of cardboard creased and folded into a modified triangle shape. The base has a nub to hold the record in place. The upper "arm" forms the "pointy" part the triangle and has a needle which is placed...
DJ
Magnetic cartridge
Magnetic cartridge
A magnetic cartridge is a transducer used for the playback of gramophone records on a turntable or phonograph. It converts mechanical vibrational energy from a stylus riding in a spiral record groove into an electrical signal that is subsequently amplified and then converted back to sound by a...
RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as Radio Corporation of America, was an electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. Currently, the RCA trademark is owned by the French conglomerate Thomson SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Thomson...
Record changer
Record changer
A record changer or autochanger is a device that plays multiple gramophone records in sequence without user intervention. Record changers first appeared in the late 1920s, and were common until the 1980s.-History:...
Record press
Record press
A record press is a machine for manufacturing vinyl records. It is essentially a hydraulic press with a closing force of 100 tons and is fitted with moulds. Labels and a vinyl pattie are placed in the mould cavity while the moulds are being steam-heated with an ideal steam pressure of 140-170psi...
Sound recording
Turntablism
Turntablism
Turntablism is the art of manipulating sounds and creating music using phonograph turntables and a DJ mixer. The word 'turntablist' was coined in 1995 by DJ Babu to describe the difference between a DJ who just plays records, and one who performs by touching and moving the records, stylus and mixer...
Unusual types of gramophone records
Unusual types of gramophone records
The overwhelming majority of records manufactured have been of certain sizes , playback speeds , and appearance...
Voyager Golden Record
Voyager Golden Record
The Voyager Golden Record is a phonograph record included in the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977. It contains sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. It is intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or far future humans, that may find it...
Vinyl Emulation Software
Vinyl Emulation Software
Vinyl emulation software allows the user to physically manipulate the playback of digital audio files on a computer using the turntables as an interface, thus preserving the hands-on 'feel' of deejaying with vinyl while allowing playback of audio recordings not available in phonograph form...
RIAA equalization
RIAA equalization
RIAA equalization is a specification for the correct playback of gramophone records, established by the Recording Industry Association of America...
Children's gramophone records

This article details a comparison of audio recording media.

Format	Type	Typical length
Cylinders	Analog	around 2 - 4 minutes
78 record	Analog	around 3 - 5 minutes per side
45 record	Analog	often around 4 minutes (EP Extended play An extended play is a vinyl record, CD, or music download which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as an LP. Usually, a CD single has around 10–28 minutes of music, an EP has up to 36 minutes, and an album generally has 30–80 minutes. Mini-LPs generally contain 20–30... : 7 minutes) per side, up to 6 per side, in some cases even a few minutes longer.
LP record LP album Long-playing record albums are 33⅓ rpm vinyl gramophone records , generally either 10 or 12 inches in diameter. They were first introduced in 1948, and served as a primary release format for recorded music until the compact disc began to significantly displace them by 1988...	Analog	up to 30 minutes per side, though some LPs have a longer time by a few minutes.
Audio cassette	Analog	usually 30 or 45 minutes per side, 60 minutes per side have also been sold although the tape is more prone to stretching or breaking.
8-Track 8-track cartridge Stereo 8, commonly known as the eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, or eight-track, is a magnetic tape sound recording technology, popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. Stereo 8 was created in 1964 by a consortium led by Bill Lear of Lear Jet Corporation, along with Ampex, Ford Motor...	Analog	up to 100 minutes, often 45 to 80
Compact disc Compact Disc A Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store sound recordings exclusively, but later it also allowed the preservation of other types of data. Audio CDs have been commercially available since October 1982...	Digital	Earlier discs: up to 74 minutes (or up to 650 MB Megabyte The megabyte is an SI-multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission and is equal to 10⁶ bytes. However, due to historical usage in computer-related fields it is still often used to represent 2²⁰ bytes. In rare cases, it is used to mean... of data files)
	Digital	Later discs: up to 80 minutes (or up to 700 MB Megabyte The megabyte is an SI-multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission and is equal to 10⁶ bytes. However, due to historical usage in computer-related fields it is still often used to represent 2²⁰ bytes. In rare cases, it is used to mean... of data files)
Recordable discs CD-R A CD-R is a variation of the Compact Disc invented by Philips and Sony. CD-R is a Write Once Read Many optical medium, though the whole disk does not have to be entirely written in the same session....	Digital	Up to 99 minutes, though unlikely to be reliable after 90 minutes due to mistracking
Reel-to-Reel	Analog	1.5 hours (both sides) if recorded at 7.5 inches per second (ips) on a standard 1800 ft reel. Professionals record at 30 ips on 3600 ft reels that will fit 22.5 minutes (one side only). A 3600 ft reel can hold up to 48 hours if recorded in mono (4 sides) at 15/16 ips.
Minidisc MiniDisc A MiniDisc is a magneto-optical disc-based data storage device initially intended for storage of up to 80 minutes of digitized audio...	Digital	Earlier discs: 74 minutes up to 296 minutes, dependent upon compression used.
	Digital	Later discs: 80 minutes up to 320 minutes, dependent upon compression used.
Hi-MD Hi-MD In January 2004, Sony announced the Hi-MD media storage format as a further development of the MiniDisc-Format. With its release in later 2004 came the ability to use newly-developed, high-capacity 1 gigabyte Hi-MD discs, sporting the same dimensions as regular MiniDiscs.- Main features of Hi-MD :*...	Digital	Up to 13 hours on a standard 80-minute MiniDisc.
	Digital	Up to 45 hours on a 1Gb Hi-MD (MiniDisc)
Digital audio player Digital audio player A digital audio player, sometimes referred to as an MP3 player, is a consumer electronic device that has the primary function of storing, organizing and playing audio files...	Digital	Roughly 186 hours of playback per 10 GiB Gibibyte The gibibyte is a standards-based binary multiple of the byte, a unit of digital information storage... , assuming an average bitrate of 128 kbit/s. Roughly 372 hours with 64 kbit/s and roughly 74 hours with 320 kbit/s.
DVD DVD DVD, also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc,is an optical disc storage media format, and was founded in 1995. Its main uses are video and data storage...	Digital	around 8.5 hours per layer (4.7 Gb), with a maximum of two layers per side, which roughly equals 35 hours on a dual layered, two sided disc (can change due to compression).
SACD Super Audio CD Super Audio CD is a high-resolution, read-only optical audio disc format developed by Sony and Philips Electronics, the same companies that created the Compact Disc. SACD is designed to provide high-resolution audio in both stereo and surround sound modes...	Digital	Hybrid: A "Red Book Red Book (audio CD standard) Red Book is the standard for audio CDs . It is named after one of a set of color-bound books that contain the technical specifications for all CD and CD-ROM formats.... " layer compatible with most legacy Compact Disc players, dubbed the "CD layer," and a 4.7 GB SACD layer, dubbed the "HD layer."
		Single-layer: Physically a DVD-5 DVD DVD DVD, also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc,is an optical disc storage media format, and was founded in 1995. Its main uses are video and data storage... , a single-layer SACD includes a 4.7 GB HD layer with no CD layer.
		Dual-layer: Physically a DVD-9 DVD DVD DVD, also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc,is an optical disc storage media format, and was founded in 1995. Its main uses are video and data storage... , a dual-layer SACD includes two HD layers totalling 8.5 GB, with no CD layer.
HD DVD HD DVD HD DVD is a discontinued high-density optical disc format for storing data and high-definition video.Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisaged to be the successor to the standard DVD format...	Digital	Single-layer: 15 GB
	Digital	Dual-layer capacity: 30 GB
Blu-ray	Digital	50 GB (23 Hours)
VHS VHS Video Home System, better known by its abbreviation VHS, was a video tape recording standard developed during the 1970s. It was released to the public during the latter half of the decade. During the late part of the 1970s and the early 1980s it formed one-half of the VHS vs Betamax war, which it... -tape	Analog	240 minutes for PAL PAL PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television encoding system used in broadcast television systems in large parts of the world. Other common analogue television systems are SECAM and NTSC. This page primarily discusses the colour encoding system... /SECAM SECAM SECAM, also written SÉCAM , is an analog color television system first used in France.... , 180 minutes for NTSC NTSC NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee is the analog television system used in most of the Americas, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Burma, and some Pacific island nations and territories . is also the name of the U.S. standardization body that developed the broadcast standard...
VHS-C VHS-C VHS-C is the compact VHS format introduced in 1982 and used primarily for consumer-grade compact camcorders. The format is based on the same videotape as is used in VHS, and can be played back in a standard VHS VCR with an adapter... -tape	Analog	45 minutes for PAL PAL PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television encoding system used in broadcast television systems in large parts of the world. Other common analogue television systems are SECAM and NTSC. This page primarily discusses the colour encoding system... /SECAM SECAM SECAM, also written SÉCAM , is an analog color television system first used in France.... , 40 minutes for NTSC NTSC NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee is the analog television system used in most of the Americas, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Burma, and some Pacific island nations and territories . is also the name of the U.S. standardization body that developed the broadcast standard...
DAT Digital Audio Tape Digital 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 the name suggests,... -tape	Digital	120 minutes
DCC Digital Compact Cassette Digital Compact Cassette is an obsolete magnetic tape sound recording format introduced by Philips and Matsushita in late 1992. Pitched as a successor to the standard analog cassette, and competitor to MiniDisc and Digital Audio Tape , it never became popular with the general public... -tape	Digital	105 minutes

Todd Rundgren

The Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960 who became one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed bands in the history of popular music...

' "Hey Jude

Hey Jude

" or Queen

Queen (band)

's "Bohemian Rhapsody

Bohemian Rhapsody

", which were six minutes long or more. (in 1989, RCA released 'Dreamtime' by the band Love and Rockets

Love and Rockets

Album cover

, which also allowed cover designers scope for imaginative designs, often including fold-outs and leaflets.

Recording medium comparison

See also

See also

See also