Audio Evolution

By Shreyas Puri

Music, the way in which it is known to us today has gone through a number of
transformations. Not very ago people could not imagine being able to store their voice
permanently forget about the things you can do with audio these days. The earliest from
of an audio device invented by Sir Thomas Edison in 1878 gave birth to a totally new line
of a thought. From vinyl records which existed decades ago to mp3 players of today,
music have some a long way. I am sure you’ve had tour share of doubts and questions
every time you think of music, mp3 and all that it surrounds. Here I’ve made an effort in
bringing to light the various facets of the same.
Vinyl disc records, the earliest form of discs, were invented by Emile Berliner in 1888.
Most popular ones were around 10 to 12 inches in diameter and consisted of a spiral
groove (in which the audio was stored as a mirror waveform) starting from the periphery
and ending at almost the centre of the disc. They were mostly double sided and could
store 4 to 5 minutes of audio in each side. This was the most popular format till the
introduction of cassette in mid 60s’.
Compact cassette, commonly known as the audio cassette is the most common form of
audio media available even today but is slowly loosing ground. Cassettes were taken
seriously as a medium for storing music only by the early 70s’. cassettes used a very long
( about 130meters approx ) and thin strip ( 9 to 15 micrometers ) of magnetic media
divided into very minute blocks for storing a continuous stream of audio in analog format
( the inter block gaps were negligible). The playing time of cassettes was around 25 to 30
minutes per side which was considerably longer than that of vinyl records. Cassettes were
cheaper, considering they could store much more information compared to vinyl records,
could easily be copied and very smaller and much more portable. With the introduction of
the Walkman by Sony changed everything for them better. Here was a device that was no
bigger than a cassette itself, was very portable and reliable enough to carry hi-fidelity
music anywhere and at all time if one wanted to. Then came compact discs.
CD audio or Compact disk digital audio was introduced in the early 80s’ compact discs
have a diameter of 120mm and can store around 80 minutes, which was decided to be
able to fit Beethoven’s ninth symphony on a CD of CDDA (compact disk digital audio)
format sound. The music in a CD was recorded digitally as a series of 1s (bumps) and 0s
(flats).
The introduction od CDs gave a platform for research into audio formats.this was mainly
because a CD could hold huge amounts of data (around 700+ MB) and thus people started
looking into various other ways of putting more information into the same space. I am not
just saying it. The most successful and now popular format introduced was the mp3
format.
The MPEG Audio Layer 3 or the mp3 format as it is commonly known is a lossy ( as a lot
of information is omitted ) audio format introduced in the mid 90s’ by a group of
European engineers. This format, unlike the CD audio and other formats prevalent at that
time does not require that much space and store the same data (song). This is achieved by
using various principles of the human ear which included
• cutting off certain frequencies not audible to human ear,
• if there were two sounds one much louder than the other at the same time the
lower sound would be omitted etc.
The size of the file encoded in the mp3 format depends upon the bit rate (or the amount
of bits of information, per second) one gives to the song. The standard bit-rates range
from anywhere between 96 Kbps for very small size of the file with just about acceptable
enough sound quality to 320 Kbps for near CD audio quality audio.( all sampled at 44.1
KHz. winamp one of the most successful and popular mp3 audio players introduced in
1997. it still is preferred over other players as it has a very small memory foot print and
quite fast.
Using similar principles of audio compression a number of other formats keep getting
introduced. The better known ones were:-
• ATRAC (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding)This was introduced by Sony in
1992 . Sony claimed that this format could store close to CD quality sound in a
much smaller file. This format could not become popular and was limited to
Sony’s products.
• WAV (short for audio WAVeform) introduced jointly by Microsoft and IBM.
This format could store compressed audio. But was mainly used to store
uncompressed audio in computers for post-processing and other similar
purposes .This format was limited to computers as the file sizes were quite large
and had to be converted to CDDA format to be able to play the audio through CDs
in a CD player.
• AAC ( Advanced audio codec) – was again a lossy compression format
standardized by the MPEG ( motion pictures experts group ) in 1997. This format
could store the same quality of audio as that of and mp3 file using approx. half the
space. This format got support from a number of big players in the audio industry
including Apple , which officially sells it’s audio via iTunes online in this format
for one of the mist successful audio player the iPod manufactured by Apple itself.
This format is slowly gaining popularity among portable music players over mp3.
• ALE (Apple lossless encoder ) – introduced by Apple. This was their proprietary
format. Which as the name suggests was a lossless audio format. Apple claims
that this for mat requires about half the memory to that required by a regular
lossless uncompressed audio file.
 • AC-3 - This format was introduced by Dolby Digital. This was a name given to
their series of lossy audio compression formats. This format consisted of 6
descrete channels of sound also known as 5.1 channel sound which consisted of 5
channels of full audible range frequencies and one channel for subwoofer or very
low frequencies. This format grew into a number of variants like

Dolby Digital EX -( this utilized Matrix technology to add a center and single rear
surround channel to stereo soundtracks )EX adds an extension to the standard 5.1
channel Dolby Digital codec in the form of matrixed rear channels, creating 6.1 or
7.1 channel output.
Dolby Digital Live (DDL) -is a real-time encoding technology for interactive
media such as video games and consoles like the XOBX.
Dolby Digital Surround EX It provides an economical and backwards-compatible
means for 5.1 soundtracks to carry a sixth, center back surround channel for
improved localization of effects.) This format gained a lot of popularity due to it’s
use in the Star Wars prequels.
Dolby Digital Plus -is an enhanced coding system based on the AC-3 codec. It
offers increased bitrates (up to 6.144 Mbit/s), support for more audio channels (up
to 13.1), improved coding techniques to reduce compression artifacts, and
backward compatibility with existing AC-3 hardware.
Dolby TrueHD – This format is the standard audio format for use with the new
generation of HD-DVDs (High definition audio and video )
• Real audio – with internet speeds being very low compared to the speeds we have
right now. This format was commonly used for very low bit-rate audio for
streaming via a dial-up internet connection.
• WMA – Introduced by Microsoft as a competitor to the very popular mp3 format ,
but has still not gained much ground and is still a very specific format. The audio
quality to size of file ratio was similar to the mp3 format so it was not considered
to be that great a format ,though Microsoft always claimed otherwise.
These are a few of the noteworthy formats that audio data is formatted into. There is still a
lot of research going into various algorithms and formats for the future, but the major
concern among various manufacturers is not of having the most efficient format but the
focus has shifted to piracy and how to prevent it . With the internet growing at a much
faster pace than earlier thought and people having access to all kinds of options to
download music from , apart from the pirated CDs and DVDs already available all over
the country at dirt cheap rates it is only a matter of time before the entire music industry
collapses.
Recording Industry Association of America - is in the forefront of this research and is
devising various ways of protecting the producers of music by various controversial and
restrictive means.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) and other such techonologies are currently being
worked upon. Various manufacturers have also come up with competing technologies to
protect music from being coiped. With the advent of a number of other mediums like hard
disc based and flash based players like the iPod , music is reaching a totally new
dimension in terms of reach ,availability and popularity.