Talk:History of multitrack recording

Acetates
Les Paul did multitrack recording work with Acetate records as well as on tape.. to that end, the article doesn't mention them at all. If this article had the title appended to include "...on magnetic tape" that would work, but a section on the acetate recording/playback process would be fantastic. He multitracked Mary Ford's voice for songs, which is something recording engineers do routinely now with double- and triple-tracking vocals. Kether83 (talk) 18:34, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Impact on popular music
This section needs to be reorganized and broken into two or three sections. Part of it is about the topic but parts of it are general statements about hardware. I think one section that could be extracted from this would be about consumer/home multitrack recorders. Bubba73 (talk), 23:08, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

New information?
Found this from 1937. - should it be considered in this article? RobHutten 01:10, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

leaks?
Recently, multitrack recordings / masters for major artists including Queen, Stevie Wonder and the Beatles have been leaking out onto the Internet. Also the creation of games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band have for the first time began putting multitrack recordings of popular artists in the hands of millions of ordinary people. This is in itself an important notable development in the history of multitrack recording.

Linking multitrack machines
I suggest somewhere in this article it is mentioned that as mechanical technology topped out at 24 tracks, more tracks were made available (for analog tape) by linking pairs (or multiples) of 24 track analog machines together, thus removing the need to develop ever-more tracks on a single reel of tape. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.85.129.196 (talk) 04:38, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Early history is inaccurate
If you read "Sel-sync and the "Octopus": How Came to be the First Recorder to Minimize Successive Copying in Overdubs" by Ross Snyder. You will see that the early history is wrong. Also Bing Crosby had nothing to do with multi-track recording.

Robert.Harker (talk) 06:42, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

The early history is incorrect. Tom Dowd and Les Paul had track counts beyond the 3 used by The Beatles. The USA had them first.

There were more than 24 tracks on 2" tape. Stephens made 40 track recorders.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.232.89.26 (talk) 22:17, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Raymond Scott reportedly built 7- and 14-track recorders in 1952. Rlauriston (talk) 20:10, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

This article is not chronological
The article should talk about 2 tracks first, then 4 tracks, and then move on to 8 tracks. Yet the 8 track section comes first.

History happened chronologically. So should this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.101.182.143 (talk) 21:36, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I copied text from History of sound recording and stuck it in an overview. It needs work, but it's an improvement. At least it's chronological. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.101.182.143 (talk) 21:45, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

The lead claims that multitrack recording began in 1955, yet the overview states that it began in 1943. I rewrote it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.101.182.143 (talk) 21:52, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Someone reverted my change to the lead calling it "unconstructive." More accurate information is not unconstructive in my book. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.101.182.143 (talk) 21:57, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Nevermind, they reverted it back to my version. Thanks. :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.101.182.143 (talk) 22:00, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Prior to the 1950s
I've heard that a number of early talkies in the early 1930s that didn't use optical sound or disks used either wire recordings or Fritz Pfleumers paper magnetic tape invented in 1927, patented in 1928, and further refined by AEG and BASF (one to research the tape, one to research the recorder) since 1929, in order to have the luxury of adding sounds and music in post, either on the same tape by simply not using an eraserhead, or by marrying old and new sounds together on a new master track (which were synchronized by having each recorder powered by the same generator).

Fritz Lang's M would be an example, as you can see that most shots that don't include crucial dialogue were in fact shot not at 24fps, but at something more like 12fps, then cut together with the 24fps footage, and eventually post-dubbed at a speed of 24fps (i. e. roughly twice the framerate that these shots had been made at), so that what we're hearing can impossibly be live sound. And as far as I can see, *ALL* of 1939's The Wizard of Oz musta been shot that way (look at the movements, seemingly neck-breaking acrobatic dance feats, etc.), which means they musta been playing back the songs for the actors at half the speed at the set, in order for the lips and movements to match up once the film was sped up to 24fps, a technique common in music videos today.

Anyway, would any of this count as multi-tracking? --37.83.16.218 (talk) 22:01, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Ampex price?
Added to the article: "Ampex's MM-1000-16, with a starting price of $17,0000" Is that supposed to be 17,000 or 170,000? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 08:02, 12 November 2022 (UTC)


 * I think $170,000 is probably the right price. In 1969 George Harrison said that his eight-track recorder cost 30,000 pounds, and at that time a pound was probably more than $2.  So it seems right for a 16-track recorder to be $170,000.  Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 22:45, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

60s/70s/80s/90 multitrack tape recorders
8-, 16-, 24-, 32-, 40-track machines including:

MCI JH16, JH24, 3M M56, M79, Scully 100, 280 8-track, 288 16-track, Studer A80, A800, A820, Ampex MM-1000, MM-1100, MM-1200, ATR-124, Stephens 24-track, 32-track, 40-track. Resources:


 * https://www.historyofrecording.com/Magnetic-Tape-Recorders.html
 * https://museumofmagneticsoundrecording.org/

Doug Grinbergs (talk) 07:38, 12 March 2024 (UTC)