History Of Sound

Before there was any sound recorded on film when the picture was screened in a cinema there would be huge organs placed on stage.



Once audio had started to appear in film the company 'Nagra' soon became a landmark in the TV and film industry. The audio recorders were durable and efficient, the brand went on to win many awards for it's inventions in the field of audio.



Unlike today the Nagras were designed to be repaired, opened up and modified. They used a reel of tape to record the audio, one reel of tape could record 25 mins of audio, compare that to a standard film camera's 10 mins of visual recordings its easy to understand how impressive this piece of kit was.

As time went on the Nagra was bettered by digital technology. It was replaced by the digital stereo recorder 'DAT' it was like a Walkman and cost around 600 pound. This used large DV tapes to record on.



At this time audio tapes had issues with hiss on playback so when Dolby entered the scene and reduced the amount of interference it was a landmark achievement.

A mini disc recorder was going to replace the DAT but for one reason or another it never really took off. It was used primarily as a back up unit if all else failed.

Now everything is recorded onto a hard drive and has made playback, copying and editing audio much faster and easier but the technology is much more fragile, I doubt the tools we use today will last as long as the older audio recorders.

Analogue = DAT = HDD