Legacy Audio to mp3

The LP was a 12- or 10-inch fine-grooved disc made of vinyl and played with a smaller-tipped “microgroove” stylus at a speed of ​33 1/3 rpm. Each side of a 12-inch LP could play for more than 20 minutes.

Under typical circumstances we do not duplicate 45 rpm phonograph records to digital. There are two reasons for this. First, it is a virtual certainty that any legacy 45 rpm record will have already been beautifully duplicated to CD and available at Amazon for a fraction of what we would charge. The second reason is they are almost universally copyrighted.

Any flat disc record, made between about 1898 and the late 1950s and playing at a speed around 78 revolutions per minute is called a “78.” Generally 78s are made of a brittle material which uses a shellac resin.

Radio and television stations in the 1940s (before the advent of quality magnetic tape audio) used phonographs to record audio for playback on air. The phonograph records they used however were of a quality far beyond the consumer grade phonograph records commonly in use at that time. These “transcription records” were cut at 33 ¹/₃ rpm and were 16” in diameter. The fact they were cut at such a slow speed and had a very large surface area allowed them to hold whole half-hour radio shows including commercials. In addition, the grooves were finely cut further aiding in adding available time per record.

Consider also that transcription turntables were manufactured solely for radio and TV as opposed to the consumer market. This meant that the market would sustain quality features. One quality feature commonly found on transcription turntables was a strobe light timing system whereby a precise turntable speed could be dialed in by the user without any additional instrumentation. This was important because a total playing time for any given record would therefore be assured so that on-air production was possible.

The overall quality of these records was astounding for that day. Transcription records we receive today at W. Cardone Productions (recorded 70 years ago) play back with incredible clarity rivaling the quality of modern LP records. The only catch is that the records are too large to play on modern turntables. A transcription turntable is required.

The audio cassette was introduced into the consumer market by Phillips in 1963 and was a smash hit. It was still in common use until about the year 2000.

The Micro audio cassette was generally used in portable hand-held audio recording and also in telephone message recording machines. Shown in this picture, it is compared with the standard size audio cassette so that you may understand its size.

This particular audio technology (magneto-optical) was first invented in 1983 but it was 10 years later before the concept entered the consumer market. Sadly, the MiniDisc never took off in the United States for consumer use. However, it did find widespread use among musicians and radio stations.

At W. Cardone Productions, we are equipped to duplicate very large numbers of MiniDisc media in a timely fashion. MiniDisc projects typically come in from radio station archives and number in the hundreds and the thousands.

This media was the predecessor of the venerable magnetic tape recording technology. The media itself was a steel wire so thin that it is actually very difficult to see an individual strand. The bobbin it winds onto with wire is shown in the photo. The mechanical technology behind this media is absolutely incredible. The recorder/player transports the wire from the bobbin to the takeup reel with almost unimaginable precision. The problem was that because the wire is so thin, if the wire does not distribute perfectly evenly as the transport occurs, a wire strand will be pulled underneath another strand and a snag will develop making further use of the reel virtually null. To make a perfectly distributed winding possible, an articulating play/recording head was used. You have to see it to understand it so we will leave it at that.

At W. Cardone Productions, we are equipped to duplicate very large numbers of these magnetic steel audio recording media in a timely fashion. This media requires playback equipment that has been precisely conformed to the manufacturer specifications. Anything else puts your legacy media at risk.

The digital audio tape, or DAT, is somewhat smaller than the audio cassette easily fitting in the palm of one’s hand. But a standard size DAT cassette holds a full two hours of audio recording. This one would have entered the consumer market except that the music industry made special provisions that it would never make it. Had the DAT entered into widespread consumer use, it would have likely killed the recording industry or at least crippled it. However, the DAT cassette did find widespread use for archival of radio station broadcasts. Consequently, when a DAT order comes in here at W. Cardone Productions, it is on the order of hundreds of cassettes.

Audio recording to magnetic tape was invented literally by accident in the early 1940s but only made to compete with other media for extremely high quality in the mid 1960s. Its easy ability to re-record over and over and for relatively long durations made it extremely attractive for consumer use.