It’s 2024, most audio recordings are created digitally, well almost all.
Even the most basic of methods are really very quick and far more reliable than some in the past and this has been the way for quite some time but lets not forget the heritage of the crazy long winded analogue processes and often frustrating failed digital methods we’ve had to go through to get to this exciting, fast and sometimes instant ‘record and share’ culture of today.
Lets go back to the start – well the beginning for me entering the world of Radio Broadcasting anyway. As the first female presenter on Metro radio I began my audio and broadcasting life technically mastering Reel to Reel. A huge machine that you had to use large car wheel sized tape, a chinagraph pencil to mark an edit and a sharp razor blade to splice it then stick it together with splicing tape – goodness it all sounds so prehistoric now and today – well it would be a Heath and Safety nightmare?
So there we are, it’s the 90’s we are playing actual records – 7” singles that you had to physically book out of the music library yourself from a chap that wore socks with his sandals no matter the season. You played your adverts from ‘Carts’ or tape of a smaller size on a large individual cassettes that only held one commercial at a time which you loaded manually and pressed a play button for each advert separately, you really had to know them all by heart. Carts which had to be literally wiped clean of their audio when used by sticking your hand into a magnetic box to erase or wipe them clean for the next recording and yes, you had to make sure you didn’t have your watch on whilst doing this procedure.
Luckily for me that was an end of an era as we soon moved onto shiny new CD’s pretty quickly as tighter record playing rotations came into force and song durations shortened. As a female presenter you often hoped you’d have Sinead O’Connor, ‘Nothing Compares To You’, on your playlist as with a 5 min plus duration this was a must if you were in need of a toilet break just to make it up and down 2 flights of stairs and back to the studio without a dreaded silence. But lets stay on point.
Next, you’ll see in my treasure trove of digital materials in the image for this blog, a small haul of recordings I’ve saved over the years on various digital formats. DAT tape, the smallest form of tape recording we ever advanced to prior to the dreaded MiniDisc – truly unreliable and which once led to the loss of a very important face to face interview with Cher in her London home sitting on her swing in the lounge over looking the Thames, which thankfully we used a backup machine on, so hurray for being prepared.
After this came many first and often now forgotten recording methods which all were often dreadful quality and thankfully fell by the wayside, giving way to the truly revolutionary digital gear we use today be it Phone, Computer, Ring doorbell or TikTok.
Thankfully, we no longer need to be in the same studio with a subject to record audio of outstanding quality should the set up lend to it. We don’t need to be in the same country, continent nor need to book a satellite dish to broadcast from abroad then deal with 6 maybe 10 seconds delay.
Today our communication is instant as we gather on group chats, go live on platforms and record templated videos from socials. Sharing and collaborating with colleagues, followers and friends across the world all now achievable without any great thought at all.
But save a thought for the times that have gone before us and those huge equipment filled rooms of before. Studios stuffed full of equipment with mixing desks as big as a house, libraries of acetate and engineers as tech will no doubt continue to evolve. One things for sure it not going to stand still and I wonder what advancements are to come? I’m imagining where it will next take us and welcome where our creative minds can explore.
