title: Grey market

text: Manufacturers of computers, telecom, and technology equipment often sell these products through distributors. Most distribution agreements require the distributor to resell the products strictly to end users. However, some distributors choose to resell products to other resellers. In the late 1980s, manufacturers labelled the resold products as the "grey market".


title: Grey market

text: The legality of selling "grey market" products depends on a number of factors. Courts in the United States and in the EU make a number of assessments, including an examination of the physical and non-physical differences between the "grey market" and authorized products to determine whether there are material differences. The legality of the products oftentimes turns on this examination.


title: Grey market

text: In November 2016, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales confirmed a ruling in the case of "R v C and Others" that the sale of grey goods can be met by criminal sanctions under section 92 of the UK Trade Marks Act 1994, with a potential penalty of up to 10 years in prison.


title: Grey market

text: It is worth mentioning that the goods sold in this case were, in fact, counterfeit and infringed on trademarks; as such, people would consider these to be black market goods, rather than grey. The simple fact is that selling or reselling any products one has bought is not generally considered a crime, and most traders rely on their right to resale and thus trade.


title: Grey market

text: Grey market goods are goods sold outside the authorized distribution channels by entities which may have no relationship with the producer of the goods. This form of parallel import frequently occurs when the price of an item is significantly higher in one country than another. This commonly takes place with electronic equipment such as cameras. Entrepreneurs buy the product where it is available cheaply, often at retail but sometimes at wholesale, and import it to the target market. They then sell it at a price high enough to provide a profit but below the normal market price.


title: Grey market

text: International efforts to promote free trade, including reduced tariffs and harmonised national standards, facilitate this form of arbitrage whenever manufacturers attempt to preserve highly disparate pricing. Because of the nature of grey markets, it is difficult or impossible to track the precise numbers of grey market sales. Grey market goods are often new, but some grey market goods are used goods. A market in used goods is sometimes nicknamed a green market.


title: Grey market

text: The two main types of grey markets are those of imported manufactured goods that would normally be unavailable or more expensive in a certain country and unissued securities that are not yet traded in official markets. Sometimes the term dark market is used to describe secretive, unregulated trading in commodity futures, notably crude oil in 2008. This can be considered a third type of "grey market" not intended or explicitly authorised by oil producers.


title: Grey market

text: The import of legally restricted or prohibited items such as prescription drugs or firearms, on the other hand, is considered black market, as is the smuggling of goods into a target country to avoid import duties. A related concept is bootlegging; the smuggling or transport of highly regulated goods, especially alcoholic beverages. The term "bootlegging" is also often applied to the production or distribution of counterfeit or otherwise infringing goods (also black market).


title: Grey market

text: Grey markets sometimes develop for video game consoles and titles whose demand temporarily exceeds their supply causing authorised local suppliers to run out of stock. This happens especially during the holiday season. Other popular items, such as dolls, magnets and contraception, can also be affected. In such situations, the grey market price may be considerably higher than the manufacturer's suggested retail price, with unscrupulous sellers buying items in bulk for the express purpose of inflating the prices during resale, a practice called scalping. Online auction sites such as eBay have contributed to the emergence of the video-game grey market.


title: Grey market

text: Certain otherwise identical arcade games are marketed under different titles, such as "Carrier Air Wing"/"U.S. Navy", "Mega Man"/"Rockman", and "Police 911"/"Police 24/7".


title: Grey market

text: When certain arcade games are first powered on, a warning message is shown such as “[t]his game is intended only for sale and use in (country/region)” and often, such a message is occasionally displayed while the machine is in an attract mode.


title: Grey market

text: One reason for these regional name variants is trademark issues. A company may not own the rights to a trademark in another country, where that trademark may be owned by an entirely different entity. Because of this, a different name must be used.


title: Grey market

text: These regional name variations may also be used to prevent the sale of bootleg arcade games, including those from Japanese versions.


title: Grey market

text: Automobile manufacturers segment world markets by territory and price, thus creating a demand for grey import vehicles.


title: Grey market

text: Although some grey imports are a bargain, some buyers have discovered that their vehicles do not meet local regulations, or that parts and services are difficult to obtain because these cars are different from the versions sold through the new car dealer network.


title: Grey market

text: Also, ensuring service history and mechanical condition for a vehicle purchased at a distance can be a problem.


title: Grey market

text: Many used cars come from Singapore or Japan, and are sold in other countries around the world, including United Kingdom, Russia and New Zealand. Japan and Singapore both have strict laws against older cars. The Japanese "Shaken" road-worthiness testing regime, requires progressively more expensive maintenance, involving the replacement of entire vehicle systems, that are unnecessary for safety, year on year, to devalue older cars and promote new cars on their home market that were available for low prices. This makes these well running cars seem reasonably priced, even after transport expenses. There are very few cars in Japan more than five years old.


title: Grey market

text: New car arbitrage has become an issue in the US as well, especially when the US price is lower in the US than in countries like China.


title: Grey market

text: Beyond cost issues, grey market cars provide consumer access to models never officially released. Before 1987, the Range Rover and Lamborghini Countach, both revolutionary designs, were grey import vehicles in the United States. The grey market provided a clear signal to these manufacturers that the United States had significant demand for these cars, and their present-day US model descendants remain popular. Years later, Nissan similarly decided to sell the GT-R in North America after seeing how many people were importing older Skylines. Although Mercedes-Benz was also a beneficiary of the signals to US consumer demand that the grey market provided, their lobbying in Washington succeeded in virtually ending the US grey market in 1988.


title: Grey market

text: In the UK, some Japanese domestic market models fetch a high price because of their performance, novelty or status, assisted by the fact that the Japanese drive on the left, in common with the UK, so vehicles are right hand drive. Popular types include - off-road vehicles, people carriers, affordable sports cars like the Mazda MX-5 / Roadster, very high performance sports cars like the rally homologation based cars like the Subaru Impreza and Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, ultra compact kei cars, and limited edition Japanese market designer cars like the Nissan Figaro.


title: Grey market

text: In Japan, due to strict and differing car classifications and emission regulations, or lack of main consumer demand, some international models or certain regional models aren't sold in Japanese Domestic Market. Grey importers are trying to import some of these models into Japan but it is permitted due to lack of restrictions imposed on them, unlike in other countries. Among the grey-imported vehicles in Japan are pickup trucks like Toyota Tundra, Nissan Navara and Subaru BRAT, which aren't officially sold in Japan.


title: Grey market

text: In television and radio broadcasting, grey markets primarily exist in relation to satellite radio and satellite television delivery.


title: Grey market

text: The most common form is companies reselling the equipment and services of a provider not licensed to operate in the market. For instance, a Canadian consumer who wants access to American television and radio services that are not available in Canada may approach a grey market reseller of Dish Network or DirecTV. There is also a grey market in the United States (especially from Canadian citizens with winter homes in the U.S.) for Canadian satellite services such as Bell Satellite TV or Shaw Direct.


title: Grey market

text: VPN servicss also market access to programming restricted by broadcasting deals through spoofing an IP address within a different territory. This is commonly used by Americans to access Olympic Games coverage that is unaffected by production, broadcast delays and reality-like storytelling decisions made by NBC, the American broadcaster for the Games, or to access a television series otherwise stuck on an unpopular streaming service and instead access it easier through a service such as Netflix, which may have it in their library within another territory.


title: Grey market

text: In Europe some satellite TV services are encrypted since they have only been authorised by content suppliers to broadcast films, sporting events and US entertainment programming in a certain country or countries, hence only residents of the UK and Ireland may subscribe to Sky Digital. In other European countries with large British expatriate populations, such as Spain, Sky is widely available through the grey market. Although Sky discourages the use of its viewing cards outside the UK or Ireland, and has the technology to render them invalid, many people continue to use them.


title: Grey market

text: Parallel importing of "free-to-view" Sky cards from the UK to Ireland is often done so that Irish Sky customers can receive Channel 5 and some of the other channels not generally available via Sky in the Republic because of trademark and other licensing issues. Conversely, Sky viewing cards from the Republic of Ireland, which allow viewing of Irish terrestrial channels, are imported into the UK. Northern Ireland residents subscribing to Sky can watch RTÉ One and Two and TG4, although not TV3, which carries many of the same programs as ITV, a lot of the programs airing before ITV can show them.


title: Grey market

text: It is also becoming increasingly common in the UK for some pubs to use satellite decoder cards from Greece, Norway, Poland or the Arab world to receive satellite TV broadcasting live English football matches from those countries. Alternatively, they may use cards which allow pirate decryption of scrambled signals. Such cards are typically much cheaper than the cards available in the UK from Sky (who charge extra fees for public showing licences). However, Sky has taken civil and criminal action against some who do this. Two recent cases involving grey cards have been referred to the European Court of Justice. The suppliers of grey cards and Karen Murphy have won their cases at the European Court of Justice. The judges have ruled that right holders cannot license their content on an exclusive territorial basis as it breaches EU Law on competition and free movement of goods and services. However, whilst this ruling allows domestic viewers to subscribe to foreign satellite services, pubs may still need permission from right holders such as the Premier League to broadcast content. This is because certain elements of the broadcast such as branding are copyrighted. The matter now rests on the High Court to incorporate the ruling into UK Law.


title: Grey market

text: There have been two High Court judgements on this matter now. Mr. Justice Kitchin has ruled that QC Leisure and other suppliers of foreign satellite systems can carry on with their businesses if they can prevent copyright elements such as branding of football matches from being shown in a public place. The Premier League can pursue prosecutions of licensees who show branding of matches via foreign satellite systems. Karen Murphy has won her case in the High Court following the ruling from the European Court of Justice. The ruling from Justice Stanley Burnton allows Ms Murphy to shop for the cheapest foreign satellite provider. However the ruling from Justice Kitchin prevents Ms Murphy from showing matches in her pub via foreign satellite systems because branding are copyrighted. It is no longer illegal though for a customer to purchase a foreign viewing card from an EU country and use it outside the territory.


title: Grey market

text: The emergence of the GSM international standard for cell phones in 1990 prompted the beginning of the grey market in the cell phone industry. As global demand for mobile phones grew, so did the size of the parallel market. Today, it is estimated that over 30% of all mobile phones traded will pass through the grey market and that statistic continues to grow. It is impossible to quantify an exact figure, but sources suggest that as many as 500,000 mobile phones are bought and sold outside official distribution channels through their trading platforms every day. Many smaller countries and markets (such as Croatia, for example) are still being prone to grey imports of mobile phones, apparently due to very limited number of mobile phone models ever to be sold in that particular country.


title: Grey market

text: The driving forces behind a heavily active mobile phone grey market include currency fluctuations, customers demands, manufacturers policies, market-specific features, and price variations. It is not uncommon for grey market traders to introduce a product into a market months in advance of the official launch. This was evident with the launch of the iPhone 4, where international grey market traders bought large quantities at Apple's retail price then shipped to countries where the product was not available, adding a substantial margin to the resale price. The launch of the iPhone 14, which lost the SIM card slot in the United States and was replaced with eSIM technology, but remains elsewhere, including Canada, also created a grey market for a version with a traditional SIM card slot.


title: Grey market

text: Purchasing some games from online content distribution systems, such as Valve's Steam, simply requires entering a valid CD key to associate with an account. In 2007, after the release of "The Orange Box", Valve deactivated accounts with CD keys that were purchased outside the consumer's territory in order to maintain the integrity of region-specific licensing. This generated complaints from North American customers who had circumvented their Steam end-user licence agreement by purchasing "The Orange Box" through cheaper, market retailers.


title: Grey market

text: Due to regional lockout, video game consoles and their games are often subjected to grey market trade and are chosen as the alternative to modding by some gamers. The reasons for this may range from the console being crippled in some markets to that of the desired game not being released for the market the potential consumer of the game is in.


title: Grey market

text: PC code stripping is a process by which boxed PC product is bought in large quantities at cheap rates. Manual labor is then used to open the box, retrieve the activation code from the box and enter the code into a database. The activation code is then sold online as a download key and the physical product is discarded or sold as backup media.


title: Grey market

text: There is a grey market in electronics in which retailers import merchandise from regions where the prices are cheaper or where regional design differences are more favourable to consumers, and subsequently sell merchandise in regions where the manufacturer's selling price is more expensive. Online retailers are often able to exploit pricing disparities in various countries by using grey-market imports from regions where the product is sold at lower costs and reselling them without regional buyer restrictions. Websites such as Taobao and eBay enable customers to buy products designed for foreign regions with different features or at cheaper costs, using parallel importation.


title: Grey market

text: The grey market for photographic equipment and other such electronics is thriving in heavily taxed states like Singapore with dealers importing directly from lower taxed states and selling at lower prices, creating competition against local distributors recognised by the products' manufacturers. "Grey sets", as colloquially called, are often comparable to products purchased from the manufacturer's preferred retailer. Lenses or flash units of parallel imports often only differ by the warranty provided, and since the grey sets were manufactured for another state, photographic equipment manufacturers often offer local warranty, instead of international warranty, which will render grey sets ineligible for warranty claims with the manufacturer.


title: Grey market

text: Because of the nature of local warranties, importers of grey sets usually offer their own warranty schemes to compensate for the manufacturers' refusal of service. Grey sets do not differ particularly from official imports. They look and function identically. In the early days of camera sales during the 60s and 70s, when lenses had amber coating, the bargain basements for Japanese equipment were Hong Kong and Singapore, through which goods were channeled to European shop windows bypassing the often substantial levy of the official importers. World-market pricing and the Internet have largely eliminated this. Canon gives their hard-selling DSLR cameras names like "Rebel" in the US and "EOS xx0/xx00" outside it, aimed at preventing the competitively priced US-merchandise reaching Europe where sales are slower but achieve a higher profit.


title: Grey market

text: Trade or bartering of frequent-flyer miles is prohibited by nearly all major airlines, although an authorised medium exists for specific frequent flyer programs. Unauthorised exchanges of frequent flyer miles – of which several exist – are also major examples of grey markets.


title: Grey market

text: Following the 2008 Chinese milk scandal, parents in China lost confidence in locally produced infant formula, creating a demand for European, Japanese and American produced formula. Import restrictions on formula from these sources has led to parents willing to pay a premium for foreign brands leading to the emergence of milk-powder runners, who buy formula at ticket price over the counter in Hong Kong, carry the tins over the border to Shenzhen before returning to Hong Kong to repeat the process. The effect of the runners led to a shortage of infant formula in Hong Kong forcing the government to impose an export restriction of two tins per person per trip. The Chinese then turned to Australia, subsequently also caused shortages there and for milk formula producers to ask retailers in the United Kingdom to restrict purchasers to two tins, as there was evidence that milk formula is being purchased for onward shipment to China.


title: Grey market

text: Some prescription medications, most notably popular and branded drugs, can have very high prices in comparison to their cost of transport. In addition, pharmaceutical prices can vary significantly between countries, particularly as a result of government intervention in prices. As a consequence, the grey market for pharmaceuticals flourishes, particularly in Europe and along the US–Canada border where Canadians often pay significantly lower prices for US-made pharmaceuticals than Americans do.


title: Grey market

text: Public company securities that are not listed, traded or quoted on any U.S. stock exchange or the OTC markets are sometimes purchased or sold over the counter (OTC) via the grey market. Grey market securities have no market makers quoting the stock. Since grey market securities are not traded or quoted on an exchange or interdealer quotation system, investors' bids and offers are not collected in a central spot so market transparency is diminished and effective execution of orders is difficult.


title: Grey market

text: In India, the unofficial grey market trades are very common for the initial public offering (IPOs). The people put their money in the unregulated and unofficial grey market before the listing of the IPOs. Company promoters along with the Market Operators buy and sell the shares before the listing. This is the easiest way to manipulate the share price before IPO listing.


title: Grey market

text: College level textbooks have a grey market, with publishers offering them for lower prices in developing countries or sometimes the UK.


title: Grey market

text: These books typically contain a disclaimer stating that importation is not permitted. However, the U.S. Supreme Court decisions "Quality King v. L'anza" (1998) and especially "Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc." (2013, involving textbooks imported from Thailand by an eBay seller) protect the importation of copyrighted materials under the first-sale doctrine.


title: Grey market

text: The "Financial Times" has stated that the market is now over a billion dollars for grey market Swiss watches such as Rolex, Breitling, IWC, Cartier, Patek Philippe SA, Audemars Piguet, Breguet and Bvlgari


title: Grey market

text: "The New York Times" even going after the Rolex Daytona calling it the hottest watch money can not buy.


title: Grey market

text: One of the biggest Grey Market marketplaces for sneakers is StockX. Since November 2020, it has also opened up to electronic products with a valuation of almost four billion.


title: Grey market

text: The parties most opposed to the grey market are usually the authorised agents or importers, or the retailers of the item in the target market. Often this is the national subsidiary of the manufacturer, or a related company. In response to the resultant damage to their profits and reputation, manufacturers and their official distribution chain will often seek to restrict the grey market. Such responses can breach competition law, particularly in the European Union. Manufacturers or their licensees often seek to enforce trademark or other intellectual-property laws against the grey market. Such rights may be exercised against the import, sale and/or advertisement of grey imports. In 2002, Levi Strauss, after a 4-year legal case, prevented the UK supermarket Tesco from selling grey market jeans. However, such rights can be limited. Examples of such limitations include the first-sale doctrine in the United States and the doctrine of the exhaustion of rights in the European Union.


title: Grey market

text: When grey-market products are advertised on Google, eBay or other legitimate web sites, it is possible to petition for removal of any advertisements that violate trademark or copyright laws. This can be done directly, without the involvement of legal professionals. For example, eBay will remove listings of such products even in countries where their purchase and use is not against the law. Manufacturers may refuse to supply distributors and retailers (and with commercial products, customers) that trade in grey market goods. They may also more broadly limit supplies in markets where prices are low. Manufacturers may refuse to honor the warranty of an item purchased from grey market sources, on the grounds that the higher price on the non-grey market reflects a higher level of service even though the manufacturer does of course control their own prices to distributors. Alternatively, they may provide the warranty service only from the manufacturer's subsidiary in the intended country of import, not the diverted third country where the grey-market goods are ultimately sold by the distributor or retailer. This response to the grey market is especially evident in electronics goods. Local laws (or customer demand) concerning distribution and packaging (for example, the language on labels, units of measurement, and nutritional disclosure on foodstuffs) can be brought into play, as can national standards certifications for certain goods.


title: Grey market

text: Manufacturers may give the same item different model numbers in different countries, even though the functions of the item are identical, so that they can identify grey imports. Manufacturers can also use supplier codes to enable similar tracing of grey imports. Parallel market importers often decode the product in order to avoid the identification of the supplier. In the United States, courts have ruled decoding is legal, however manufacturers and brand owners may have rights if they can prove that the decoding has materially altered the product where certain trademarks have been defaced or the decoding has removed the ability of the manufacturer from enforcing quality-control measures. For example, if the decoding defaces the logo of the product or brand or if the batch code is removed preventing the manufacturer from re-calling defective batches.


title: Grey market

text: The development of DVD region codes, and equivalent regional-lockout techniques in other media, are examples of technological features designed to limit the flow of goods between national markets, effectively fighting the grey market that would otherwise develop. This enables movie studios and other content creators to charge more for the same product in one market than in another, or alternatively withhold the product from some markets for a particular time.


title: Grey market

text: The lawsuits started by Canon U.S.A. Inc. v. a number of retailers on 25 October 2015 in the New York Eastern District Court (Case No. 2:15-cv-6019 and No. 2:15-cv-6015) will not be tried until 2016 at the earliest, but are based on a Trademark violation. The Plaintiff alleges that the Defendant retailers applied counterfeit serial numbers to Canon digital SLR cameras and sold kits with inferior (non-Canon) warranties as well as counterfeit batteries and chargers that did not comply with U.S. certification regulations. Canon U.S.A. Inc. also reserves the right to claim damages for "further violations of CUSA's intellectual property and other rights [that] will come to light as this litigation progresses".


title: Grey market

text: The Alliance for Gray Market and Counterfeit Abatement (AGMA) is a California-based non-profit organisation of information technology (IT) companies that works to educate and raise awareness on counterfeiting; digital IP protection; service and warranty abuse; and the grey market.


title: Grey market

text: Consumer advocacy groups argue that discrimination against consumers—the charging of higher prices on the same object simply because of where they happen to live—is unjust and monopolistic behaviour on the part of corporations towards the public. Since it requires governments to legislate to prevent their citizens from purchasing goods at cheaper prices from other markets, and because this is clearly not in their citizens' interests, many governments in democratic countries have chosen not to protect anti-competitive technologies such as DVD region-coding.


title: Grey market

text: Correspondingly, the grey market has found support from most ideological tendencies. Anarchist opponents of class discrimination argue that private property in general leads to the oppression of much of society and are therefore against the very idea of intellectual property, which forms the basis of arguments against the grey market. Proponents of the corporate financial system, in agreement, assert that the enforcement of intellectual property can lead to a 'lessening of composing effort'.


title: Grey market

text: The grey market has been a constant source of litigation and appeals in the United States. The same fundamental question arises under patent law and copyright law, namely whether or not a good sold abroad lawfully is still protected by United States intellectual property law for the purposes of resale. When purchased domestically, a copyrighted good may be resold by the purchaser under the first sale doctrine contained at 17 U.S.C. §109(c). Similarly, a patented good may be re-sold under the patent exhaustion doctrine. In 2013, the United States Supreme Court largely discussed the legality of the grey market when it decided "Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc." where it held that a sale abroad of a copyrighted good triggers the first sale doctrine. The decision is largely understood to apply to patented goods as well.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: The British Rail Class 55, also known as a Deltic, or English Electric type 5, is a class of diesel locomotive built in 1961 and 1962 by English Electric for British Railways. They were designed for the high-speed express passenger services on the East Coast Main Line (ECML) between Edinburgh and . They gained the name "Deltic" from the prototype locomotive, DP1 "Deltic" (the running number DP1 was never carried), which in turn was named after its Napier Deltic power units. At the time of their introduction into service, the Class 55s were the most powerful single-unit diesel locomotives in the world, with a power output of . They had an official maximum speed of , however this was frequently exceeded, especially in their later years of service, with speeds of up to , being recorded on level gradients, and up to whilst descending Stoke Bank.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: Twenty-two locomotives were built, which were used for express passenger services on the ECML, particularly from London to and Edinburgh. From 1978 the "InterCity 125" High Speed Trains (HSTs) were introduced, and the Deltics were subsequently relegated to semi-fast services on the Kings Cross to York, Edinburgh and Hull routes and continued on sleeper services along the ECML. All were withdrawn from service between January 1980 and December 1981.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: In 1955, the English Electric company produced a prototype diesel locomotive at the Dick, Kerr & Co works in Preston, officially named the DP1 but commonly known as "DELTIC", this prototype experimentally used two Napier Deltic engines which had been developed for marine applications. These triangular configured engines ran at high speed (1,500 RPM) more than twice that of conventionally configured engines, which gave them a high power to weight ratio, compared to the traditional diesel engines of the era. The locomotive used two of these engines, both rated at , which gave the locomotive a combined power output of for a weight of 106 tons.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: The other notable features of the locomotive was its large size by British standards, and striking styling, which was inspired by the bulldog nosed American diesels of the era.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: At the same time, the management of the British Railways Eastern Region were looking for a new generation of diesels to replace their pre-war fleet of Class A4 steam locomotives for use on top-link expresses on the East Coast Main Line. The management of the Eastern Region were unimpressed by the performance of the best conventional diesels of the time, the s, which produced with available at drawbar, which gave them no improvement over the steam locomotives they were supposed to replace. Gerry Fiennes, the traffic manager of the ECML, believed that his expresses would need a step-change in performance in order to remain competitive; impressed by the superior power and speed of the "DELTIC" prototype, he persuaded British Railways to purchase a fleet of locomotives based on it.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: In March 1958, an order was placed with English Electric for a production fleet of 22 locomotives (reduced from the originally-planned 23), replacing more than twice that number (55) of Nigel Gresley Pacifics; as steam locomotives require substantial time to clean, fuel, and fire, such a reduction in the number of units could be undertaken without a corresponding reduction in working availability. The full order was worth £3,410,000 (), working out at £155,000 (), per locomotive. Due to the complexity of the engine design, which needed specialist maintenance, the locomotives were purchased under a five year service contract, with English Electric agreeing to maintain them, including their engines and generators, for a fixed price; this was British Rail's first such contract. Additional Deltic engines were produced to enable engines to be exchanged regularly for overhaul while keeping the locomotives in service. English Electric trained the British Rail staff at the Doncaster Works in the techniques of maintaining the engines, and after the contract ended, they took over this responsibility.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: The production locomotives were built at the Vulcan Foundry at Newton-le-Willows, they were mechanically little changed from the prototype, but differed in appearance with a toned down styling, sporting a more sober colour scheme, and lacking the prototype's large headlight. The production Deltics were also 7 tons lighter than the prototype, weighing in at 99 tons, despite being nearly longer. They were originally planned to be delivered within a year from March 1960, but this deadline was not met, and they were delayed by a year, with the first Deltic entering revenue service in the summer of 1961, with a full service being introduced the following year.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: The locomotives were assigned to three locomotive depots: Finsbury Park in London, Gateshead near Newcastle, and Haymarket in Edinburgh. Very soon, all were named; the Gateshead and Edinburgh Haymarket locomotives after regiments of the British Army from the North-East of England and from Scotland, respectively, while Finsbury Park followed the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) tradition of naming locomotives after winning racehorses.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: At the same time, English Electric built a further ten locomotives which were later classified as the , which had single Napier Deltic engines; these gained the nickname "Baby Deltics" as they were in effect scaled down versions of the Deltics. These locomotives however, were far less successful in service than their larger cousins, and were all withdrawn by 1971.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: The introduction of the Deltics was a step change in locomotive performance on the East Coast Main Line. Once the entire fleet was delivered into service in 1962, the timetable was accelerated, with the journey time from London to Edinburgh cut by one hour, from seven hours to six; enabled by the Deltics' ability to rapidly accelerate and maintain high speed over long distances. This matched the timing of the pre-war A4-hauled "Coronation" service, but was achieved without priority over other traffic unlike the earlier LNER train, it was also now the timing of normal standard fare expresses throughout the day, and not just a once-a-day premium fare express. From 1966 the infrastructure on the ECML was progressively upgraded to allow higher speeds in order to take better advantage of the Deltics' capabilities; this included upgrading the track, and other improvements such as the easing of sharp curves and improving the alignments through various stations. By 1973, these upgrades had allowed another half-hour to be cut from the London–Edinburgh journey time, with the Deltic-hauled "Flying Scotsman", timetabled to reach Edinburgh in 5 ½ hours, with one stop at , achieving an average speed of over the entire journey.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: On one of O. S. Nock's first Deltic runs (the down "Heart of Midlothian" loaded to 13 coaches, 530 tons gross) he stated "once the tail of the train was over the 60 mph restriction the throttle was opened to the full, and the surge forward could be felt in the cab. Never previously had I felt a positive thrust in my back when in the second man's seat!" Nock went on to estimate that at 80 mph the locomotive was producing about 2,750 drawbar horsepower.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: As early as 1963, Deltics were recorded exceeding 100 mph, Nock recording 100 mph for 16 miles south of Thirsk with a maximum of ; he went on to say that such speeds in 1963 were "terrific".


title: British Rail Class 55

text: The ultimate Deltic performance came on 2 February 1978 with a run on the 07:25 from Newcastle to King's Cross. In some respects, the run was set up (the driver was about to retire) but the speeds were record-breaking. The locomotive was 55 008 "The Green Howards"; it was hauling 10 coaches (343 tons gross), and on the leg from York to London it achieved a timing of 137 min 15 sec. This included various signal stops and other enforced speed reductions; the net time is estimated at 115 min 45 sec, an average of start to stop. The train achieved on the flat between Darlington and York, at Offord and whilst descending Stoke Bank.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: Towards the later part of their career, the Deltics routinely exceeded 100 mph in service. The fastest regular scheduled Deltic service was the "Hull Executive" between London and , which was inaugurated in May 1978. The down (northbound) working of this service achieved an average speed of from King's Cross to its first stop at , making it the fastest regular locomotive-hauled train in Britain at the time. The "Hull Executive" was one of the last top-link workings by a Deltic, until 1981, when this service was taken over by HST's.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: The Railway Performance Society estimate that on modern infrastructure (the Selby Diversion etc.) a realistic Deltic-hauled schedule from King's Cross to Edinburgh would be around 4 hours 57 minutes (a theoretical unchecked run being around 4 hours 40 minutes). This would be for a train of 11 coaches and include a stop at Newcastle, the latter city being reached in a scheduled 3 hours 6 minutes.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: The Deltics had arrived from the manufacturer painted in two-tone green, the dark BR green on top, with a narrower strip of a lighter, lime green along the bottom. This helped to disguise the bulk of the locomotive body. The cab window surrounds were picked out in cream-white. Although delivered without it, they all soon sported the bright yellow warning panel at each end common to all British diesel and electric locomotives, to make them more conspicuous. By 1966 the InterCity branding was introduced, and the Deltics began to be painted in corporate Rail Blue with yellow ends, the change generally coinciding with a works repair and the fitting of air brake equipment, the locomotives originally having only vacuum braking (the first so treated was D9002; the last to be painted blue was D9014). In the early 1970s they were fitted with Electric Train Heating (ETH) equipment to power Mark 2 air-conditioned coaches, while a couple of years later, with the introduction of BR's TOPS computer system, they were renumbered 55 001 to 55 022.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: In the late 1970s, the Deltics began to take on secondary roles, gradually being supplanted by the next generation of express passenger services, namely the High Speed Train (HST) which were introduced on the ECML from 1978. At this time, British Rail had a general policy of not maintaining small non-standard fleets of locomotives, and when the HST fleet took over East Coast mainline services, it was obvious the class had a limited future. Various alternative uses for the fleet were examined, but this came to nothing: A significant weakness of the Deltics were their high running costs, due to the complexity of their engine design which required expensive specialist maintenance, which mitigated against their redeployment elsewhere. In their last years, the Deltics mostly operated the semi-fast services between London and York. They were also used on various popular excursions to areas of the country often far outside of their usual operating area, such as Exeter, and .


title: British Rail Class 55

text: From 1980 to 1982, the fleet was gradually run down; no new spare parts were ordered for the declining fleet, and the locomotives were gradually withdrawn, and then cannibalised for spares to keep the others running. Withdrawn locomotives were taken to Doncaster for stripping and eventual scrapping. For a time the Deltic scrap line was a major draw for railway enthusiasts. In November 1981, the Doncaster Works dismantled its Deltic engine overhaul facility.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: The National Railway Museum selected 55 002 "The King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry" for preservation as part of the National Collection. The Friends of the National Railway Museum sponsored the repaint of 55 002 into original green livery for its last eighteen months in traffic, although it carried its TOPS number rather than D9002. As insurance, in case 55 002 should meet with a mishap during its last months, the withdrawn 55 005 "The Prince of Wales's Own Regiment of Yorkshire" was set aside from breaking up at Doncaster Works until Deltic operation on the main line had concluded.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: The final service train run was the 16:30 Aberdeen-York service on 31 December 1981, hauled from Edinburgh by 55 019 "Royal Highland Fusilier", arriving in York at just before midnight. The last train was an enthusiast special, the "Deltic Scotsman Farewell", on 2 January 1982, hauled from King's Cross to Edinburgh by 55 015 "Tulyar" and 55 022 "Royal Scots Grey" on the return. 55 009 "Alycidon" shadowed the train in both directions between Peterborough and Newcastle, in case of a failure of the train locomotive. Following the farewell, the surviving Deltics were moved to Doncaster Works, where they were displayed en masse in February 1982, before disposal commenced.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: Six locomotives survive; all have run in preservation and all have operated on the mainline, although 55 015 only ran on the mainline at the Rocket 150 event in 1980. Two cabs are also preserved.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: Despite the ban on privately owned diesel locomotives operating on BR tracks, railway enthusiasts did not have to wait that long after the final withdrawal of the class to see a Deltic back on the mainline. Following participation in the hastily arranged 'Farewell to the Deltics' open day at British Rail Engineering Limited's Doncaster Works on 27 February 1982, 55 002 left Doncaster under its own power and ran back up the ECML to the National Railway Museum light engine; it was to be some years before a Deltic was officially allowed to run again on the mainline.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: The next opportunity to see a Deltic back on the mainline and running under its own power was in April 1985 when D9000 was sent (at the request of ScotRail management) light engine from Haymarket depot to Perth for an open day. Following newspaper comments by ScotRail's manager Chris Green around that time there was hope that D9000 might see regular work on ScotRail's lines. Chris Green's move to the management team at the newly created Network SouthEast in 1986 put paid to that. However, that did not end his involvement with D9000. He arranged for Network South East depots to provide accommodation for both D9000 and D9016 and when he moved on to head up Virgin Rail Group D9000 was used on summer Saturday Virgin CrossCountry services in the late 1990s.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: With the changes taking place on Britain's railways in the 1990s, the outlook changed for preserved diesel locomotives. In British Rail days no privately owned diesel locomotives were allowed to operate on its tracks. With privatisation came open-access railways—the track and infrastructure were owned and operated by Railtrack, who for a fee would allow approved locomotives and trains to operate on their track. Suddenly, the owners of preserved locomotives were on an equal footing with everyone else. In fact, the characteristics of the Deltic locomotives, powerful and capable of cruising at , enabled them to fit more easily onto the modern rail network than other, slower, preserved diesels.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: In 1996 the Deltic 9000 Fund was incorporated as Deltic 9000 Locomotives Ltd (DNLL) with the objective of returning its locomotives to main-line service and on 30 November 1996 D9000 "Royal Scots Grey" hauled the 'Deltic Deliverance' charter from Edinburgh to King's Cross. This tour however ended prematurely at Berwick-upon-Tweed after a fire broke out in the loco's engine room. D9000 went on to haul many charter trains and service trains for both Anglia Railways and Virgin CrossCountry until 2003. Subsequently, DNLL's other Deltic, D9016 "Gordon Highlander" returned to main-line working (it was temporarily painted in a purple and grey livery based upon the house colours of Porterbrook, who helped finance the restoration), as did the Deltic Preservation Society's D9009 "Alycidon" and 55 019 "Royal Highland Fusilier". Between 1997 and 2003 all four main-line certified locomotives saw frequent charter and spot hire use, including on the Venice Simplon Orient Express. A highlight of this period was 22 May 1999, when D9000 "Royal Scots Grey", D9009 "Alycidon" and 55 019 "Royal Highland Fusilier" were all in operation on the East Coast Main Line on the same day – D9000 running the "George Mortimer Pullman" British Pullman between London Victoria and Bradford Forster Square and the DPS Deltics working two charter trains between King's Cross and York. On the return run from Bradford, D9000 was held in platform 1 at Doncaster, whilst 55 019 passed on the up through line. D9000 then followed 55 019 as far as Belle Isle, where it diverged for the run around London to Victoria.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: In 2003, DNLL went into liquidation with the result that D9000 and D9016 were sold to private individuals. From July 2003 to March 2005 no Deltics hauled a train on the main line. After a brief return to the main line in 2005 the DPS withdrew their last Deltic (55 019) at the end of 2005, having run three tours during the year. D9015 "Tulyar" is currently undergoing a full overhaul at Barrow Hill, with the aim of main line operation, whilst 55 002 "The King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry" is currently painted in BR blue, main line certificated, and operates from the National Railway Museum. 55 019 remains in full working order along with D9009, whilst D9016 is currently able to operate on one engine only.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: On 23 September 2006, 55 022 (D9000) "Royal Scots Grey" returned to the main line after a lengthy and extensive restoration at Barrow Hill, carried out on behalf of the owners by the DPS. It successfully hauled the SRPS 'Moray Mint' railtour from Edinburgh to Inverness, via Perth on the outward trip and back via Aberdeen. On its second working two weeks later, severe damage occurred to the number 2 end engine. The engine suffered from "a leg out of bed", a term which means the engine con-rod breaks out of the engine crankcase. This left "Royal Scots Grey" still able to operate but on one engine only. By January 2007, the faulty power unit was removed from 55 022, put into storage and replaced by an ex-marine Napier Deltic engine modified for rail use; work was completed by "Royal Scots Grey"'s restoration team in August 2007. After extensive testing at the East Lancs Railway the locomotive hauled its first tour since the previous engine malfunction on RTC's 'Autumn Highlander' with 50 049 and 40 145 in October 2007. 55 022 successfully hauled a number of charter tour services during 2008 but the replacement marine-sourced engine gave rise for concern following the discovery of oil in the coolant and at the end of August the locomotive was removed from future large railtour duties. The locomotive continued working mainline duty by visiting other preserved railway and moving other non-mainline registered locomotives.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: In mid January 2007, an agreement was reached between heritage railway Peak Rail and the owner of D9016 "Gordon Highlander" which entailed the move of the locomotive from Barrow Hill to the preserved line for a period of three years. It had been thought that D9016 would receive certain maintenance and restoration while on the railway. However, the sale of the locomotive to the Harry Needle Railroad Company and subsequent announcements indicated that the weekend runs of 27 and 28 September 2008 might be its last prior to component recovery and eventual scrapping. Despite previous indications to the contrary, HNRC put the locomotive up for sale during the last week of September 2008 and although the Gordon Highlander Preservation Group submitted a substantial bid it was not accepted and the immediate future (and owner) of the locomotive was shrouded in some mystery.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: Subsequently, in October 2008, DRS announced in a press release that it had acquired D9016 "Gordon Highlander" from Harry Needle Railroad Company (HNRC): "The company is working with HNRC to return the locomotive to operational condition, although at the time of writing (June 2009) the locomotive is still stored at Barrow Hill awaiting attention. While the locomotive is not planned for an immediate return to service, DRS is confident that the locomotive will be returned to mainline service in the future. DRS intends to retain the locomotive's name". On 29 December 2009, it was announced that D9016 had been purchased by Beaver Sports (Yorks) Limited. It has subsequently operated (on one engine) on the East Lancashire Railway and the Great Central Railway, pending work to restore it to full working order.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: In April 2011, 55 022 was hired in by GB Railfreight for bauxite freight working between North Blyth and the Lynemouth aluminium smelter. This hire was scheduled to last from April to July. From May 2013 to November 2015, 55 022 was chartered by GBRF to transfer First ScotRail EMU's for refurbishment. These included the entire fleet of s, which were moved between Yoker and Kilmarnock. The route taken, partially to prevent false fire alarms in underground tunnels caused by the Deltic engine's emissions, takes the train as far as Craigendoran on the north bank of the Clyde before turning round toward Kilmarnock.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: On 29 November 2017 it was announced via the official Royal Scots Grey website that 55 022 and D9016, plus all spares, had been sold by Martin Walker to Locomotive Services Limited, with both making the trip to LSL's Crewe Diesel TMD base in December 2017. It is intended that both locomotives will ultimately be repaired (55 022 currently has engine problems and D9016 is coming to the end of bodywork repairs) and operated on the mainline alongside Hosking's sizable locomotive fleet. By June 2018, 55 022 was under repair while D9016 had been placed in store and was transferred, cosmetically restored, to Locomotive Storage Limited's facility at Margate.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: A 72-ton Bo-Bo locomotive, using a single 18 cylinder Deltic engine, was proposed as an alternative to what became the British Rail Class 37 Type 3 locomotive introduced from 1960.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: A Co-Co "Super Deltic" was proposed but not built. There were three potential designs between 4000 hp and 4600 hp weighing between 114 and 119 tons with a maximum axle load of . The locomotives would have looked very similar to the eventual Class 50s, though slightly longer. All three designs would have had two 18-cylinder turbocharged engines, based on the 9-cylinder turbocharged engine used in the British Rail Class 23 "Baby Deltic" and the locomotive would have been designated Class 51. The Class 55's engines were not turbocharged, although they did have centrifugal scavenging blowers.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: The first OO gauge model was produced by Hornby Dublo in 2 versions. D9012 "Crepello" was the 2 rail version and D9001 "St Paddy" was the 3 rail version. The second OO gauge model was produced by Lima, in two versions initially: D9003 "Meld" in BR Green; and 9006 "The Fife & Forfar Yeomanry" in BR Blue. The same models were also released in N gauge (1:160 scale), however these did not last very long, as Lima eventually decided to concentrate its British outline output on OO gauge.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: Bachmann have since released a new version of the "Deltic", in both the OO gauge "Branchline" range and their N gauge "Graham Farish" range. Bachmann have also produced the "Deltic Prototype" in OO gauge (previously only available as a plastic kit from either Kitmaster or Dapol), however this had been commissioned by Locomotion Models - the model railways arm of the Nation Railway Museum - and was not generally available in model shops. A "Graham Farish" N gauge model is available, as a stand-alone model, and as part of the "Merseyside Express" train set.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: In 2012 Hornby Railways launched a version of the BR Class 55, which is basic representation of the prototype as part of their Railroad range in BR Blue and BR Green in OO gauge. This model was essentially the old Lima tooling with a new chassis.


title: British Rail Class 55

text: Accurascale announced a new range of OO gauge "Deltics", in a wide variety of liveries, which released in summer 2022.


title: History of sound recording

text: 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:


title: History of sound recording

text: Experiments in capturing sound on a recording medium for preservation and reproduction began in earnest during the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s. Many pioneering attempts to record and reproduce sound were made during the latter half of the 19th century – notably Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville's phonautograph of 1857 – and these efforts culminated in the invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison in 1877. Digital recording emerged in the late 20th century and has since flourished with the popularity of digital music and online streaming services.


title: History of sound recording

text: The earliest practical recording technologies were entirely mechanical devices. These recorders typically used a large conical horn to collect and focus the physical air pressure of the sound waves produced by the human voice or musical instruments. A sensitive membrane or diaphragm, located at the apex of the cone, was connected to an articulated scriber or stylus, and as the changing air pressure moved the diaphragm back and forth, the stylus scratched or incised an analogue of the sound waves onto a moving recording medium, such as a roll of coated paper, or a cylinder or disc coated with a soft material such as wax or a soft metal.


title: History of sound recording

text: These early recordings were necessarily of low fidelity and volume and captured only a narrow segment of the audible sound spectrum — typically only from around 250 Hz up to about 2,500 Hz — so musicians and engineers were forced to adapt to these sonic limitations. Musical ensembles of the period often favoured louder instruments such as trumpet, cornet, and trombone; lower-register brass instruments such as the tuba and the euphonium doubled or replaced the double bass, and blocks of wood stood in for bass drums. Performers also had to arrange themselves strategically around the horn to balance the sound, and to play as loudly as possible. The reproduction of domestic phonographs was similarly limited in both frequency-range and volume.


title: History of sound recording

text: By the end of the acoustic era, the disc had become the standard medium for sound recording, and its dominance in the domestic audio market lasted until the end of the 20th century.


title: History of sound recording

text: The 'second wave' of sound recording history was ushered in by the introduction of Western Electric's integrated system of electrical microphones, electronic signal amplifiers and electromechanical recorders, which was adopted by major US record labels in 1925. Sound recording now became a hybrid process — sound could now be captured, amplified, filtered, and balanced electronically, and the disc-cutting head was now electrically powered, but the actual recording process remained essentially mechanical – the signal was still physically inscribed into a wax 'master' disc, and consumer discs were mass-produced mechanically by stamping a metal electroform made from the wax master into a suitable substance, originally a shellac-based compound and later polyvinyl plastic.


title: History of sound recording

text: The Western Electric system greatly improved the fidelity of sound recording, increasing the reproducible frequency range to a much wider band (between 60 Hz and 6000 Hz) and allowing a new class of professional – the audio engineer – to capture a fuller, richer, and more detailed and balanced sound on record, using multiple microphones connected to multi-channel electronic amplifiers, compressors, filters and mixers. Electrical microphones led to a dramatic change in the performance style of singers, ushering in the age of the "crooner", while electronic amplification had a wide-ranging impact in many areas, enabling the development of broadcast radio, public address systems, and electronically-amplified home record players.


title: History of sound recording

text: In addition, the development of electronic amplifiers for musical instruments now enabled quieter instruments such as the guitar and the string bass to compete on equal terms with the naturally louder wind and horn instruments, and musicians and composers also began to experiment with entirely new electronic musical instruments such as the Theremin, the Ondes Martenot, the electronic organ, and the Hammond Novachord, the world's first analogue polyphonic synthesiser.


title: History of sound recording

text: Contemporaneous with these developments, several inventors were engaged in a race to develop practical methods of providing synchronised sound with films. Some early sound films — such as the landmark 1927 film "The Jazz Singer" – used large soundtrack records which were played on a turntable mechanically interlocked with the projector. By the early 1930s, the movie industry had almost universally adopted sound-on-film technology, in which the audio signal to be recorded was used to modulate a light source that was imaged onto the moving film through a narrow slit, allowing it to be photographed as variations in the density or width of a "soundtrack" running along a dedicated area of the film. The projector used a steady light and a photoelectric cell to convert the variations back into an electrical signal, which was amplified and sent to loudspeakers behind the screen.


title: History of sound recording

text: The adoption of sound-on-film also helped movie-industry audio engineers to make rapid advances in the process we now know as "multi-tracking", by which multiple separately-recorded audio sources (such as voices, sound effects and background music) can be replayed simultaneously, mixed together, and synchronised with the action on film to create new 'blended' audio tracks of great sophistication and complexity. One of the best-known examples of a 'constructed' composite sound from that era is the famous "Tarzan yell" created for the series of Tarzan movies starring Johnny Weissmuller.


title: History of sound recording

text: Among the vast and often rapid changes that have taken place over the last century of audio recording, it is notable that there is one crucial audio device, invented at the start of the "Electrical Era", which has survived virtually unchanged since its introduction in the 1920s: the electro-acoustic transducer, or loudspeaker. The most common form is the dynamic loudspeaker – effectively a dynamic microphone in reverse. This device typically consists of a shallow conical diaphragm, usually of a stiff paper-like material concentrically pleated to make it more flexible, firmly fastened at its perimeter, with the coil of a moving-coil electromagnetic driver attached around its apex. When an audio signal from a recording, a microphone, or an electrified instrument is fed through an amplifier to the loudspeaker, the varying electromagnetic field created in the coil causes it and the attached cone to move backward and forward, and this movement generates the audio-frequency pressure waves that travel through the air to our ears, which hear them as sound.


title: History of sound recording

text: Although there have been numerous refinements to the technology, and other related technologies have been introduced (e.g. the electrostatic loudspeaker), the basic design and function of the dynamic loudspeaker has not changed substantially in 90 years, and it remains overwhelmingly the most common, sonically accurate and reliable means of converting electronic audio signals back into audible sound.


title: History of sound recording

text: The third wave of development in audio recording began in 1945 when the allied nations gained access to a new German invention: magnetic tape recording. The technology was invented in the 1930s but remained restricted to Germany (where it was widely used in broadcasting) until the end of World War II. Magnetic tape provided another dramatic leap in audio fidelity—indeed, Allied observers first became aware of the existence of the new technology because they noticed that the audio quality of obviously pre-recorded programs was practically indistinguishable from live broadcasts.


title: History of sound recording

text: From 1950 onwards, magnetic tape quickly became the standard medium of audio master recording in the radio and music industries, and led to the development of the first hi-fi stereo recordings for the domestic market, the development of multi-track tape recording for music, and the demise of the disc as the primary mastering medium for sound. Magnetic tape also brought about a radical reshaping of the recording process—it made possible recordings of far longer duration and much higher fidelity than ever before, and it offered recording engineers the same exceptional plasticity that film gave to cinema editors—sounds captured on tape could now easily be manipulated sonically, edited, and combined in ways that were simply impossible with disc recordings.


title: History of sound recording

text: These experiments reached an early peak in the 1950s with the recordings of Les Paul and Mary Ford, who pioneered the use of tape editing and multi-tracking to create large 'virtual' ensembles of voices and instruments, constructed entirely from multiple taped recordings of their own voices and instruments. Magnetic tape fueled a rapid and radical expansion in the sophistication of popular music and other genres, allowing composers, producers, engineers and performers to realize previously unattainable levels of complexity. Other concurrent advances in audio technology led to the introduction of a range of new consumer audio formats and devices, on both disc and tape, including the development full-frequency-range disc reproduction, the change from shellac to polyvinyl plastic for disc manufacture, the invention of the 33rpm, 12-inch long-playing (LP) disc and the 45rpm 7-inch "single", the introduction of domestic and professional portable tape recorders (which enabled high-fidelity recordings of live performances), the popular 4-track cartridge and compact cassette formats, and even the world's first "sampling keyboards", the pioneering tape-based keyboard instrument the Chamberlin, and its more famous successor, the Mellotron.


title: History of sound recording

text: The fourth and current "phase", the "digital" era, has seen the most rapid, dramatic and far-reaching series of changes in the history of audio recording. In a period of fewer than 20 years, all previous recording technologies were rapidly superseded by digital sound encoding, and the Japanese electronics corporation Sony in the 1970s was instrumental with the first consumer (well-heeled) PCM encoder PCM-F1, introduced in 1981 https://www.kenrockwell.com/audio/sony/pcm-f1.htm. Unlike all previous technologies, which captured a continuous analogue of the sounds being recorded, digital recording captured sound by means of a very dense and rapid series of discrete samples of the sound. When played back through a digital-to-analogue converter, these audio samples are recombined to form a continuous flow of sound. The first all-digitally-recorded popular music album, Ry Cooder's "Bop 'Til You Drop", was released in 1979, and from that point, digital sound recording and reproduction quickly became the new standard at every level, from the professional recording studio to the home hi-fi.


title: History of sound recording

text: Although a number of short-lived "hybrid" studio and consumer technologies appeared in this period (e.g. Digital Audio Tape or DAT, which recorded digital signal samples onto standard magnetic tape), Sony assured the preeminence of its new digital recording system by introducing, together with Philips, the digital compact disc (CD). The compact disc rapidly replaced both the 12" album and the 7" single as the new standard consumer format, and ushered in a new era of high-fidelity consumer audio.


title: History of sound recording

text: CDs are small, portable and durable, and they could reproduce the entire audible sound spectrum, with a large dynamic range (~96dB), perfect clarity and no distortion. Because CDs were encoded and read optically, using a laser beam, there was no physical contact between the disc and the playback mechanism, so a well-cared-for CD could be played over and over, with absolutely no degradation or loss of fidelity. CDs also represented a considerable advance in both the physical size of the medium, and its storage capacity. LPs could only practically hold about 20-25 minutes of audio per side because they were physically limited by the size of the disc itself and the density of the grooves that could be cut into it — the longer the recording, the closer together the grooves and thus the lower the overall fidelity. CDs, on the other hand, were less than half the overall size of the old 12" LP format, but offered about double the duration of the average LP, with up to 80 minutes of audio.


title: History of sound recording

text: The compact disc almost totally dominated the consumer audio market by the end of the 20th century, but within another decade, rapid developments in computing technology saw it rendered virtually redundant in just a few years by the most significant new invention in the history of audio recording — the digital audio file (.wav, .mp3 and other formats). When combined with newly developed digital signal compression algorithms, which greatly reduced file sizes, digital audio files came to dominate the domestic market, thanks to commercial innovations such as Apple's iTunes media application, and their popular iPod portable media player.


title: History of sound recording

text: However, the introduction of digital audio files, in concert with the rapid developments in home computing, soon led to an unforeseen consequence — the widespread unlicensed distribution of audio and other digital media files. The uploading and downloading of large volumes of digital media files at high speed was facilitated by freeware file-sharing technologies such as Napster and BitTorrent.


title: History of sound recording

text: Although infringement remains a significant issue for copyright owners, the development of digital audio has had considerable benefits for consumers and labels. In addition to facilitating the high-volume, low-cost transfer and storage of digital audio files, this new technology has also powered an explosion in the availability of so-called "back-catalogue" titles stored in the archives of recording labels, thanks to the fact that labels can now convert old recordings and distribute them digitally at a fraction of the cost of physically reissuing albums on LP or CD. Digital audio has also enabled dramatic improvements in the restoration and remastering of acoustic and pre-digital electric recordings, and even freeware consumer-level digital software can very effectively eliminate scratches, surface noise and other unwanted sonic artefacts from old 78rpm and vinyl recordings and greatly enhance the sound quality of all but the most badly damaged records. In the field of consumer-level digital data storage, the continuing trend towards increasing capacity and falling costs means that consumers can now acquire and store vast quantities of high-quality digital media (audio, video, games and other applications), and build up media libraries consisting of tens or even hundreds of thousands of songs, albums, or videos — collections which, for all but the wealthiest, would have been both physically and financially impossible to amass in such quantities if they were on 78 or LP, yet which can now be contained on storage devices no larger than the average hardcover book.


title: History of sound recording

text: The digital audio file marked the end of one era in recording and the beginning of another. Digital files effectively eliminated the need to create or use a discrete, purpose-made physical recording medium (a disc, or a reel of tape, etc.) as the primary means of capturing, manufacturing and distributing commercial sound recordings. Concurrent with the development of these digital file formats, dramatic advances in home computing and the rapid expansion of the Internet mean that digital sound recordings can now be captured, processed, reproduced, distributed and stored entirely electronically, on a range of magnetic and optical recording media, and these can be distributed anywhere in the world, with no loss of fidelity, and crucially, without the need to first transfer these files to some form of permanent recording medium for shipment and sale.


title: History of sound recording

text: Music streaming services have gained popularity since the late 2000s. Streaming audio does not require the listener to own the audio files. Instead, they listen over the internet. Streaming services offer an alternative method of consuming music and some follow a freemium business model. The freemium model many music streaming services use, such as Spotify and Apple Music, provide a limited amount of content for free, and then premium services for payment. There are two categories in which streaming services are categorized, radio or on-demand. Streaming services such as Pandora use the radio model, allowing users to select playlists but not specific songs to listen to, while services such as Apple Music allow users to listen to both individual songs and pre-made playlists.


title: History of sound recording

text: The earliest method of sound recording and reproduction involved the live recording of a performance directly to a recording medium by an entirely mechanical process, often called "acoustical recording". In the standard procedure used until the mid-1920s, the sounds generated by the performance vibrated a diaphragm with a recording stylus connected to it while the stylus cut a groove into a soft recording medium rotating beneath it. To make this process as efficient as possible, the diaphragm was located at the apex of a hollow cone that served to collect and focus the acoustical energy, with the performers crowded around the other end. Recording balance was achieved empirically. A performer who recorded too strongly or not strongly enough would be moved away from or nearer to the mouth of the cone. The number and kind of instruments that could be recorded were limited. Brass instruments, which recorded well, often substituted instruments such as cellos and bass fiddles, which did not. In some early jazz recordings, a block of wood was used in place of the snare drum, which could easily overload the recording diaphragm.


title: History of sound recording

text: In 1857, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville invented the phonautograph, the first device that could record sound waves as they passed through the air. It was intended only for visual study of the recording and could not play back the sound. The recording medium was a sheet of soot-coated paper wrapped around a rotating cylinder carried on a threaded rod. A stylus, attached to a diaphragm through a series of levers, traced a line through the soot, creating a graphic record of the motions of the diaphragm as it was minutely propelled back and forth by the audio-frequency variations in air pressure.


title: History of sound recording

text: In the spring of 1877 another inventor, Charles Cros, suggested that the process could be reversed by using photoengraving to convert the traced line into a groove that would guide the stylus, causing the original stylus vibrations to be recreated, passed on to the linked diaphragm, and sent back into the air as sound. Edison's invention of the phonograph soon eclipsed this idea, and it was not until 1887 that yet another inventor, Emile Berliner, actually photoengraved a phonautograph recording into metal and played it back.


title: History of sound recording

text: Scott's early recordings languished in French archives until 2008 when scholars keen to resurrect the sounds captured in these and other types of early experimental recordings tracked them down. Rather than using rough 19th-century technology to create playable versions, they were scanned into a computer and software was used to convert their sound-modulated traces into digital audio files. Brief excerpts from two French songs and a recitation in Italian, all recorded in 1860, are the most substantial results.


title: History of sound recording

text: The phonograph, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877, could both record sound and play it back. The earliest type of phonograph sold recorded on a thin sheet of tinfoil wrapped around a grooved metal cylinder. A stylus connected to a sound-vibrated diaphragm indented the foil into the groove as the cylinder rotated. The stylus vibration was at a right angle to the recording surface, so the depth of the indentation varied with the audio-frequency changes in air pressure that carried the sound. This arrangement is known as vertical or "hill-and-dale" recording. The sound could be played back by tracing the stylus along the recorded groove and acoustically coupling its resulting vibrations to the surrounding air through the diaphragm and a so-called "amplifying" horn.


title: History of sound recording

text: The crude tinfoil phonograph proved to be of little use except as a novelty. It was not until the late 1880s that an improved and much more useful form of the phonograph was marketed. The new machines recorded on easily removable hollow wax cylinders and the groove was engraved into the surface rather than indented. The targeted use was business communication, and in that context, the cylinder format had some advantages. When entertainment use proved to be the real source of profits, one seemingly negligible disadvantage became a major problem: the difficulty of making copies of a recorded cylinder in large quantities.


title: History of sound recording

text: At first, cylinders were copied by acoustically connecting a playback machine to one or more recording machines through flexible tubing, an arrangement that degraded the audio quality of the copies. Later, a pantograph mechanism was used, but it could only produce about 25 fair copies before the original was too worn down. During a recording session, as many as a dozen machines could be arrayed in front of the performers to record multiple originals. Still, a single "take" would ultimately yield only a few hundred copies at best, so performers were booked for marathon recording sessions in which they had to repeat their most popular numbers over and over again. By 1902, successful molding processes for manufacturing prerecorded cylinders had been developed.


title: History of sound recording

text: The wax cylinder got a competitor with the advent of the Gramophone, which was patented by Emile Berliner in 1887. The vibration of the Gramophone's recording stylus was horizontal, parallel to the recording surface, resulting in a zig-zag groove of constant depth. This is known as lateral recording. Berliner's original patent showed a lateral recording etched around the surface of a cylinder, but in practice, he opted for the disc format. The Gramophones he soon began to market were intended solely for playing prerecorded entertainment discs and could not be used to record. The spiral groove on the flat surface of a disc was relatively easy to replicate: a negative metal electrotype of the original record could be used to stamp out hundreds or thousands of copies before it wore out. Early on, the copies were made of hard rubber, and sometimes of celluloid, but soon a shellac-based compound was adopted.


title: History of sound recording

text: "Gramophone", Berliner's trademark name, was abandoned in the US in 1900 because of legal complications, with the result that in American English Gramophones and Gramophone records, along with disc records and players made by other manufacturers, were long ago brought under the umbrella term "phonograph", a word which Edison's competitors avoided using but which was never his trademark, simply a generic term he introduced and applied to cylinders, discs, tapes and any other formats capable of carrying a sound-modulated groove. In the UK, proprietary use of the name Gramophone continued for another decade until, in a court case, it was adjudged to have become genericized and so could be used freely by competing disc record makers, with the result that in British English a disc record is called a "gramophone record" and "phonograph record" is traditionally assumed to mean a cylinder.


title: History of sound recording

text: Not all cylinder records are alike. They were made of various soft or hard waxy formulations or early plastics, sometimes in unusual sizes; did not all use the same groove pitch; and were not all recorded at the same speed. Early brown wax cylinders were usually cut at about 120 rpm, whereas later cylinders ran at 160 rpm for clearer and louder sound at the cost of reduced maximum playing time. As a medium for entertainment, the cylinder was already losing the format war with the disc by 1910, but the production of entertainment cylinders did not entirely cease until 1929 and use of the format for business dictation purposes persisted into the 1950s.


title: History of sound recording

text: Disc records, too, were sometimes made in unusual sizes, or from unusual materials, or otherwise deviated from the format norms of their eras in some substantial way. The speed at which disc records were rotated was eventually standardized at about 78 rpm, but other speeds were sometimes used. Around 1950, slower speeds became standard: 45, 33⅓, and the rarely used 16⅔ rpm. The standard material for discs changed from shellac to vinyl, although vinyl had been used for some special-purpose records since the early 1930s and some 78 rpm shellac records were still being made in the late 1950s.


title: History of sound recording

text: Until the mid-1920s records were played on purely mechanical record players usually powered by a wind-up spring motor. The sound was "amplified" by an external or internal horn that was coupled to the diaphragm and stylus, although there was no real amplification: the horn simply improved the efficiency with which the diaphragm's vibrations were transmitted into the open air. The recording process was, in essence, the same non-electronic setup operating in reverse, but with a recording, stylus engraving a groove into a soft waxy master disc and carried slowly inward across it by a feed mechanism.


title: History of sound recording

text: The advent of electrical recording in 1925 made it possible to use sensitive microphones to capture the sound and greatly improved the audio quality of records. A much wider range of frequencies could be recorded, the balance of high and low frequencies could be controlled by elementary electronic filters, and the signal could be amplified to the optimum level for driving the recording stylus. The leading record labels switched to the electrical process in 1925 and the rest soon followed, although one straggler in the US held out until 1929.


title: History of sound recording

text: There was a period of nearly five years, from 1925 to 1930 when the top "audiophile" technology for home sound reproduction consisted of a combination of electrically recorded records with the specially-developed Victor Orthophonic Victrola, an acoustic phonograph that used waveguide engineering and a folded horn to provide a reasonably flat frequency response. The first electronically amplified record players reached the market only a few months later, around the start of 1926, but at first, they were much more expensive and their audio quality was impaired by their primitive loudspeakers; they did not become common until the late 1930s.


title: History of sound recording

text: Electrical recording increased the flexibility of the process, but the performance was still cut directly to the recording medium, so if a mistake was made the whole recording was spoiled. Disc-to-disc editing was possible, by using multiple turntables to play parts of different "takes" and recording them to a new master disc, but switching sources with split-second accuracy was difficult and lower sound quality was inevitable, so except for use in editing some early sound films and radio recordings it was rarely done.


title: History of sound recording

text: Electrical recording made it more feasible to record one part to disc and then play that back while playing another part, recording both parts to a second disc. This and conceptually related techniques, known as "overdubbing", enabled studios to create recorded "performances" that feature one or more artists each singing multiple parts or playing multiple instrument parts and that therefore could not be duplicated by the same artist or artists performing live. The first commercially issued records using overdubbing were released by the Victor Talking Machine Company in the late 1920s. However, overdubbing was of limited use until the advent of audio tape. Use of tape overdubbing was pioneered by Les Paul in the 1940s.


title: History of sound recording

text: Wire recording or magnetic wire recording is an analog type of audio storage in which a magnetic recording is made on thin steel or stainless steel wire.


title: History of sound recording

text: 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 being supplied to the recording head at that instant. By later drawing the wire across the same or a similar head while the head is not being supplied with an electrical signal, the varying magnetic field presented by the passing wire induces a similarly varying electric current in the head, recreating the original signal at a reduced level.


title: History of sound recording

text: Magnetic wire recording was replaced by magnetic tape recording, but devices employing one or the other of these media had been more or less simultaneously under development for many years before either came into widespread use. The principles and electronics involved are nearly identical. Wire recording initially had the advantage that the recording medium itself was already fully developed, while tape recording was held back by the need to improve the materials and methods used to manufacture the tape.


title: History of sound recording

text: Magnetic recording was demonstrated in principle as early as 1898 by Valdemar Poulsen in his telegraphone. Magnetic wire recording, and its successor, magnetic tape recording, involve the use of a magnetized medium which moves with a constant speed past a recording head. An electrical signal, which is analogous to the sound that is to be recorded, is fed to the recording head, inducing a pattern of magnetization similar to the signal. A playback head can then pick up the changes in the magnetic field from the tape and convert it into an electrical signal.


title: History of sound recording

text: With the addition of electronic amplification developed by Curt Stille in the 1920s, the telegraphone evolved into wire recorders which were popular for voice recording and dictation during the 1940s and into the 1950s. The reproduction quality of wire recorders was significantly lower than that achievable with phonograph disk recording technology. There were also practical difficulties, such as the tendency of the wire to become tangled or snarled. Splicing could be performed by knotting together the cut wire ends, but the results were not very satisfactory.


title: History of sound recording

text: On Christmas Day, 1932 the British Broadcasting Corporation first used a steel tape recorder for their broadcasts. The device used was a Marconi-Stille recorder, a huge and dangerous machine which used steel tape that had sharp edges. The tape was wide and thick running at past the recording and reproducing heads. This meant that the length of tape required for a half-hour programme was nearly and a full reel weighed .


title: History of sound recording

text: Engineers at AEG, working with the chemical giant IG Farben, created the world's first practical magnetic tape recorder, the 'K1', which was first demonstrated in 1935. During World War II, an engineer at the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft discovered the AC biasing technique. With this technique, an inaudible high-frequency signal, typically in the range of 50 to 150 kHz, is added to the audio signal before being applied to the recording head. Biasing radically improved the sound quality of magnetic tape recordings. By 1943 AEG had developed stereo tape recorders.


title: History of sound recording

text: During the war, the Allies became aware of radio broadcasts that seemed to be transcriptions (much of this due to the work of Richard H. Ranger), but their audio quality was indistinguishable from that of a live broadcast and their duration was far longer than was possible with 78 rpm discs. At the end of the war, the Allies captured a number of German Magnetophon recorders from Radio Luxembourg that aroused great interest. These recorders incorporated all of the key technological features of analogue magnetic recording, particularly the use of high-frequency bias.


title: History of sound recording

text: American audio engineer John T. Mullin served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps and was posted to Paris in the final months of World War II. His unit was assigned to find out everything they could about German radio and electronics, including the investigation of claims that the Germans had been experimenting with high-energy directed radio beams as a means of disabling the electrical systems of aircraft. Mullin's unit soon amassed a collection of hundreds of low-quality magnetic dictating machines, but it was a chance visit to a studio at Bad Neuheim near Frankfurt while investigating radio beam rumours that yielded the real prize.


title: History of sound recording

text: Mullin was given two suitcase-sized AEG 'Magnetophon' high-fidelity recorders and fifty reels of recording tape. He had them shipped home and over the next two years, he worked on the machines constantly, modifying them and improving their performance. His major aim was to interest Hollywood studios in using magnetic tape for movie soundtrack recording.


title: History of sound recording

text: Mullin gave two public demonstrations of his machines, and they caused a sensation among American audio professionals—many listeners could not believe that what they were hearing was not a live performance. By luck, Mullin's second demonstration was held at MGM studios in Hollywood and in the audience that day was Bing Crosby's technical director, Murdo Mackenzie. He arranged for Mullin to meet Crosby and in June 1947 he gave Crosby a private demonstration of his magnetic tape recorders.


title: History of sound recording

text: Crosby was stunned by the amazing sound quality and instantly saw the huge commercial potential of the new machines. Live music was the standard for American radio at the time and the major radio networks did not permit the use of disc recording in many programs because of their comparatively poor sound quality. But Crosby disliked the regimentation of live broadcasts, preferring the relaxed atmosphere of the recording studio. He had asked NBC to let him pre-record his 1944–45 series on transcription discs, but the network refused, so Crosby had withdrawn from live radio for a year, returning for the 1946–47 season only reluctantly.


title: History of sound recording

text: Mullin's tape recorder came along at precisely the right moment. Crosby realized that the new technology would enable him to pre-record his radio show with a sound quality that equalled live broadcasts and that these tapes could be replayed many times with no appreciable loss of quality. Mullin was asked to tape one show as a test and was immediately hired as Crosby's chief engineer to pre-record the rest of the series.


title: History of sound recording

text: Crosby became the first major American music star to use tape to pre-record radio broadcasts and the first to master commercial recordings on tape. The taped Crosby radio shows were painstakingly edited through tape-splicing to give them a pace and flow that was wholly unprecedented in radio. Mullin even claims to have been the first to use "canned laughter"; at the insistence of Crosby's head writer, Bill Morrow, he inserted a segment of raucous laughter from an earlier show into a joke in a later show that had not worked well.


title: History of sound recording

text: Keen to make use of the new recorders as soon as possible, Crosby invested $50,000 of his own money into Ampex, and the tiny six-man concern soon became the world leader in the development of tape recording, revolutionizing radio and recording with its famous Ampex Model 200 tape deck, issued in 1948 and developed directly from Mullin's modified Magnetophones.


title: History of sound recording

text: Development of magnetic tape recorders in the late 1940s and early 1950s is associated with the Brush Development Company and its licensee, Ampex; the equally important development of magnetic tape media itself was led by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing corporation (now known as 3M).


title: History of sound recording

text: The next major development in the magnetic tape was multitrack recording, in which the tape is divided into multiple tracks parallel with each other. Because they are carried on the same medium, the tracks stay in perfect synchronization. The first development in multitracking was stereo sound, which divided the recording head into two tracks. First developed by German audio engineers ca. 1943, two-track recording was rapidly adopted for modern music in the 1950s because it enabled signals from two or more microphones to be recorded separately at the same time (while the use of several microphones to record on the same track had been common since the emergence of the electrical era in the 1920s), enabling stereophonic recordings to be made and edited conveniently. (The first stereo recordings, on disks, had been made in the 1930s, but were never issued commercially.) Stereo (either true, two-microphone stereo or multi mixed) quickly became the norm for commercial classical recordings and radio broadcasts, although many pop music and jazz recordings continued to be issued in monophonic sound until the mid-1960s.


title: History of sound recording

text: Much of the credit for the development of multitrack recording goes to guitarist, composer and technician Les Paul, who also helped design the famous electric guitar that bears his name. His experiments with tapes and recorders in the early 1950s led him to order the first custom-built eight-track recorder from Ampex, and his pioneering recordings with his then-wife, singer Mary Ford, were the first to make use of the technique of multitracking to record separate elements of a musical piece asynchronously — that is, separate elements could be recorded at different times. Paul's technique enabled him to listen to the tracks he had already taped and record new parts in time alongside them.


title: History of sound recording

text: Multitrack recording was immediately taken up in a limited way by Ampex, who soon produced a commercial 3-track recorder. These proved extremely useful for popular music since they enabled backing music to be recorded on two tracks (either to allow the overdubbing of separate parts or to create a full stereo backing track) while the third track was reserved for the lead vocalist. Three-track recorders remained in widespread commercial use until the mid-1960s and much famous pop recordings — including many of Phil Spector's so-called "Wall of Sound" productions and early Motown hits — were taped on Ampex 3-track recorders. Engineer Tom Dowd was among the first to use the multitrack recording for popular music production while working for Atlantic Records during the 1950s.


title: History of sound recording

text: The next important development was 4-track recording. The advent of this improved system gave recording engineers and musicians vastly greater flexibility for recording and overdubbing, and 4-track was the studio standard for most of the later 1960s. Many of the most famous recordings by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were recorded on 4-track, and the engineers at London's Abbey Road Studios became particularly adept at a technique called "reduction mixes" in the UK and "bouncing down" in the United States, in which several tracks were recorded onto one 4-track machine and then mixed together and transferred (bounced down) to one track of a second 4-track machine. In this way, it was possible to record literally dozens of separate tracks and combine them into finished recordings of great complexity.


title: History of sound recording

text: All of the Beatles classic mid-1960s recordings, including the albums "Revolver" and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", were recorded in this way. There were limitations, however, because of the build-up of noise during the bouncing-down process, and the Abbey Road engineers are still famed for their ability to create dense multitrack recordings while keeping background noise to a minimum.


title: History of sound recording

text: 4-track tape also enabled the development of quadraphonic sound, in which each of the four tracks was used to simulate a complete 360-degree surround sound. A number of albums were released both in stereo and quadrophonic format in the 1970s, but 'quad' failed to gain wide commercial acceptance. Although it is now considered a gimmick, it was the direct precursor of the surround sound technology that has become standard in many modern home theatre systems.


title: History of sound recording

text: In a professional setting today, such as a studio, audio engineers may use 24 tracks or more for their recordings, using one or more tracks for each instrument played.


title: History of sound recording

text: The combination of the ability to edit via tape splicing and the ability to record multiple tracks revolutionized studio recording. It became common studio recording practice to record on multiple tracks, and bounce down afterward. The convenience of tape editing and multitrack recording led to the rapid adoption of magnetic tape as the primary technology for commercial musical recordings. Although 33⅓ rpm and 45 rpm vinyl records were the dominant consumer format, recordings were customarily made first on tape, then transferred to disc, with Bing Crosby leading the way in the adoption of this method in the United States.


title: History of sound recording

text: Analog magnetic tape recording introduces noise, usually called "tape hiss", caused by the finite size of the magnetic particles in the tape. There is a direct tradeoff between noise and economics. Signal-to-noise ratio is increased at higher speeds and with wider tracks, and decreased at lower speeds and with narrower tracks.


title: History of sound recording

text: By the late 1960s, disk reproducing equipment became so good that audiophiles soon became aware that some of the noise audible on recordings was not surface noise or deficiencies in their equipment, but reproduced tape hiss. A few specialist companies started making "direct to disc recordings", made by feeding microphone signals directly to a disk cutter (after amplification and mixing), in essence reverting to the pre-War direct method of recording. These recordings never became popular, but they dramatically demonstrated the magnitude and importance of the tape hiss problem.


title: History of sound recording

text: Before 1963, when Philips introduced the Compact audio cassette, almost all tape recording had used the reel-to-reel (also called "open reel") format. Previous attempts to package the tape in a convenient cassette that required no threading met with limited success; the most successful was 8-track cartridge used primarily in automobiles for playback only. The Philips Compact audio cassette added much-needed convenience to the tape recording format and a decade or so later had begun to dominate the consumer market, although it was to remain lower in quality than open-reel formats.