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The
world's first audio
recording and playback
machine was invented by
the American Thomas Edison
in 1877. Up until that
time, there was no method
to capture, store or
playback audio sound
waves.
The
early audio recordings had
a very limited ability to
reproduce sounds
accurately, they had
limited audio bandwidth
with surface noise and
high levels of distortion.
The
Hi-Fi era sparked into
life in 1948 when vinyl
record were introduction
and the subsequent
improvements in
turntables, magnetic
pick-ups, amplifier and
loud speaker technology.
Certainly during the early
1960s true high fidelity
was available to the
enthusiast, many of whom
made their own amplifiers
and speaker enclosures.
In
1961 VHF FM radio arrived
in the UK broadcasting
high quality mono audio
further fueling the audio
enthusiast passion for
fidelity. For the audio
hobbyist having the
equipment to reproduce as
close as possible the
original recordings was
and still is a very
powerful drive.
Another
massive HI-FI step was
taken in 1982 with the
introduction of the
digital compact disc
resolving many of the
issues still plaguing the
media. This new CD
totally eliminated surface
noise issues and CDs were
less likely to be damaged
than the vinyl records
that suffered from
scratches, dust and
flutter.
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future for audio is
very bright, with
still further
improvements in audio
recording and faithful
reproduction. The
Digital format is here
to stay and over time
analogue equipment
will become treasured
collector items. With
the introduction of
very high resolution
(32 bit) digital
recordings on
"Super CD"
DVD formats, faithful
reproduction of the
analogue sound wave is
now at, or close to,
absolute perfection.
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