Worship Musician Magazine September 2020 | Page 137

HISTORIC TIMELINE
A quick review of the development of digital
audio concepts and equipment uncovers how
quickly everything changed, once the process
found its momentum in the commercial audio
world. It’s incredible that PMC technology—the
same technology we use almost exclusively
today—was invented in the ’30s! And, also
note that the first surround sound movie was
Walt Disney’s Fantasia in 1940! Pay attention
to how quickly digital technology and its
commercialization moved once the momentum
built. Futurist, Ray Kuzweil—creator of Kuzweil
keyboards—studied the progress of knowledge
far enough back to confirm that technological
capacities double each year. That’s exponential
growth! Kurzweil predicted several years ago
that by 2029, mankind and computers would
be indistinguishable.
TIMELINE OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
1937. Britain’s Alec Reeves invented pulsecode
modulation (PCM) technology.
1940. Walt Disney produced Fantasia, the
first surround sound movie using an audio
format they called Fantasound. The format
was designed for use in theaters and proved
to be too expensive for mass implementation
due to its reliance on 54 speakers in the
studio.
1960s. NHK and Nippon Columbia (Denon)
pioneered commercial digital recording in
Japan.
1965. Seventeen-year-old inventor, author,
and futurist Ray Kurzweil demonstrated his
music-composing computer on the television
show, I’ve Got a Secret.
1967. The first digital tape recorder was
demonstrated in Japan.
1969. Dr. Thomas Stockham experiments
with digital tape recording.
1970. The Lexicon Delta-T 101 (the first
digital delay line) is introduced.
1971. Denon demonstrated the first 18-bit
stereo recording using a helical-scan video
recorder.
1972. Denon label releases the first digitally
mastered records.
1973. Allen & Heath built the MOD1, a
This is the custom quadraphonic mixer made for Pink Floyd. The Mod1 was used to mix their live gigs by Alan
Parsons. It can be seen in their movie “Live at Pompeii”.
custom quadraphonic mixing console for
the band Pink Floyd, used by Alan Parsons
to mix their live performances. This wasn’t
digital but it showed early movement into
multichannel live sound.
1974. Grateful Dead performs Wall of
Sound at the San Francisco Cow Palace,
using separate sound systems for vocals,
each guitar, piano, and drums.
1975. Digital tape recording begins to take
hold in professional audio studios.
1975. EMT produces its EMT 250, the first
digital reverberation unit.
1975. Dolby Stereo Sound releases a fourchannel
mix consisting of left, center, right,
and surround (rear).
1975. The Who’s movie, Tommy, is released
in five-channel quintophonic sound.
1976. The first 16-bit digital recording
in the U.S. is made by Dr. Stockham of
Soundstream at the Santa Fe Opera.
1977. Sony releases the PCM-1, the first
commercially available digital audio recorder.
The first commercial digital audio recorder was the Sony PCM-1. It was the ADC that stored digital audio
data on video tape.
September 2020
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