How far have audio and video technologies come?
By Zatni Arbi
If you love music, whether as a musician or as a listener, you will agree that nothing can replace live concerts. Depending on the acoustic qualities of the concert hall, you will get the pure sound plus the ambience. In addition, during live concerts the audience can communicate directly with the performers, giving them the feedback and the encouragement that they need to be able to perform at their best.
Of course, not all live concerts are the same. Here in Jakarta we have had concerts that have ended in riots. At other times we have been annoyed by indiscreet people in the audience who talked as if they were in one of Jakarta bus terminals.
After a great number of such unpleasant experiences, we usually come to the conclusion that it may be better to just bring the show to our living room. And that is not so difficult to accomplish today, now that audio and video technologies have advanced significantly. Affordable audiovisual systems can now give us decent audio and video experience.
Beginning technologies
Audio and video technologies have indeed come a long way since E. J. Marey, a French physician, made the first motion pictures with a single camera in the 1880s. In 1889, our friend Thomas Alva Edison demonstrated his kinetograph, which used rolls of coated celluloid film to simulate moving pictures. Edison also introduced kinetoscopeI, which one could use to peep into seemingly moving images.
The cinematographe, the first device that could be used to photograph, print and project films, was patented by the Lumiere brothers in 1895, and the first projection camera followed in the U.S. in 1896.
And, in case you have ever wondered what a nickelodeon is, it was the first movie theater in the world, which opened to the public in Pittsburgh in 1905. By 1908, there were thousands of other nickelodeons in the U.S.
So, moving pictures are already more than 100 years old. However, soon people got bored with the mute pictures. Sound had to be added to the pictures to make the experience more realistic.
Recording sound
The first method of recording sound was mechanical. The vibration of the sound being recorded caused a cutter or stylus to vibrate as it engraved a pattern on a disc or a cylinder.
If you use a microscope to look at the grooves on a phonograph record, for example, you will see that the groove varies in depth and width. The reproduction of the recorded sound simply reversed the process.
Incidentally, a leading figure that contributed a lot in the creation of the LP (long playing) record was a guy named Peter Goldmark. Until today, a lot of people still listen to LPs and claim that they give a more natural resonance.
Sounds were beginning to be recorded and reproduced with additional dimensions to recreate depth. First came the stereophonic, followed by quadraphonic and now we have several different flavors of surround sounds.
High fidelity (hi-fi) was a very important advancement, as it called for a sound reproduction that was as close as possible to the original.
Cinema films, in the meantime, use another, similar way of recording and reproducing sound. In what is called optical recording, sound waves are modulated into a light beam that is focused on the moving film.
This results in photographically recorded sound tracks. To reproduce the sound, a light beam is used along with a photoelectric cell that is placed right behind the film. The intensity of the light as it reaches the cell determines the electrical current that will drive the speakers.
Cassette tapes
However, most people will be familiar with the electromagnetic method of recording and reproducing sounds. We have been using various tapes since the 1950s, and cassette tapes were responsible for making recorded music available and affordable to the masses. The attraction of the tapes is that they can be reused over and over until they are too thin to store any analog data.
The digital revolution has had its impact on the recording industry as well. Digitalization involves converting the analog sounds -- the form of recorded sound that is nondiscrete -- into the discrete digital form. Like computers data, the pitch, amplitude and other sonic characteristics are recorded in 1s and 0s.
The beauty of digital recording -- which has also been a cause of dismay for the recording industry and artists -- is that it can be copied without any degradation in quality. With an analog cassette, you will lose a certain degree of sound quality each time you create a copy.
With a digital source, the copied version will give you exactly the same quality.
The digital audio tape (DAT) was met with harsh reactions from the recording industry, and some other technical reasons were also responsible for its short life. DAT is now used for backing up computer data rather than recording digital music.
Compact discs
Philips introduced the compact disc (CD) in the early 1980s, and from then on the music-recording industry was never the same. The first CDs were very expensive, but people loved the idea of being able to play it again and again ad infinitum.
Today, CDs are still the mainstream medium for storing recorded music, although cassettes are still widely available here in Indonesia because the majority of us cannot afford CDs.
In the U.S., people love CD-changers, CD players that can play five or more CDs in different sequences -- preprogrammed, random, etc. CD jukeboxes that can hold more than 200 CDs are available in Sears, for example, and they are not very expensive. Strangely, CD-changers are not easy to find here in Jakarta.
The digital technology also affected the motion-picture industry. Laserdisc players began to appear in the late 1980s, although the technology was first introduced in 1978. LDs have two sides with recorded video and audio, and you normally have to turn it over to play the other side.
Some people believe that this annoyed couch potatoes, and, therefore, LDs never became a popular medium.
In the meantime, other alternatives also emerged. Today we have DVD, which for some people stands for digital versatile disc and for others digital video disc.
DVD, which was first introduced in the spring of 1997, offers the highest quality audio and video reproduction. Because of the ample storage available on the platter, different language tracks can be added.
Like the laserdisc, it can also incorporate Digital Dolby 5:1 sound format. It is believed that people like DVD, which looks so much like the CD, because of its familiarity and small size.
Moving pictures are also displayed differently now. While the projectors are still used in movie theaters, home theaters have moved from large-screen TVs to projectors and now to a large flat panel -- especially the flat plasma display.
The benefits are, of course, a brighter display, more brilliant colors and wider viewing angles. You can see the images even if you are not standing front-and-center of the display.
Home systems
The ready availability of the so-called "reference systems", high-end systems that are used as benchmarks for other sound systems, can also be regarded as a sign of prosperity of a country, too.
Here in Jakarta, you won't find a floor packed with high-end audiovisual products in any of the large shopping malls. In Bangkok, it is different. If you go to the shopping center right across from JW Marriott Hotel, you will see two floors crowded with stores selling top brands like Klipsch, B&W, Bose, JBL, Cervin-Vega, Nakamichi, Advent, Acoustic Research, Chords and Onkyo.
In one of the shopping malls around the corner from Grand Hyatt, a store sells mouth-watering McIntosh amplifiers.
High-end audiovisual gear is mostly for those who have bought practically everything else there is to buy. And, not surprisingly, besides the quality of the sounds that it can reproduce, the equipment has to have high aesthetic values as well.
It is, therefore, not surprising to see loudspeakers from Infinity and Meridian, for instance, come in beautifully carved shapes. They also serve as tasteful decorations for the living room of the lucky.
For those who are not worried about their savings accounts, what is the latest in the audiovisual world? Recordable DVD is certainly one.
The world's first DVD recorder came from Pioneer last December, but today, it has several competitors -- including the DVD-RAM drive on your personal computers.
For those with thinner wallet, though, MP3 players are becoming more commonplace. These gadgets, which can reproduce CD- quality audio without any moving parts, because it uses static memory technology, comes in different form factors and prices. So, what do we have in the audiovisual arena today?
We have more choice, more standards, and lower prices, and it is easier than ever to bring the show to our living room.