| Year |
Physical Media formats |
Recording formats |
|---|
| 1860 |
Phonautogram |
Mechanical analog; sound waveform transcribed to paper or glass |
| 1877 |
Phonograph cylinder |
Mechanical analog; hill-and-dale grooves, vertical stylus motion |
| 1878 - 1916 |
Ediphone - Dictaphone |
Mechanical analog, The Ediphone and subsequent wax cylinders used in Edison's other product lines continued to be sold up until 1929 when the Edison Manufacturing Company folded |
| 1883 |
Music roll |
Mechanical digital (automated musical instruments) |
| 1895 |
Gramophone record |
Mechanical analog; lateral grooves, horizontal stylus motion |
| 1898 |
Wire recording |
Analog; magnetization; DC bias |
| 1925 |
Electrical cut record |
Mechanical analog; electrically cut from amplified microphone signal, lateral grooves, horizontal stylus motion, discs at 7", 10", 12", most at 78 rpm |
| 1930s |
Reel-to-Reel, Magnetic Tape |
Analog; magnetization; AC "bias" dramatically increases linearity/fidelity, tape speed at 30 ips, later 15 ips and other refined speeds: 7½ ips, 3¾ ips, 1⅞ ips |
| Electrical transcriptions |
Mechanical analog; electrically cut from amplified microphone signal, high fidelity sound, lateral or vertical grooves, horizontal or vertical stylus motion, most discs 16" at 33⅓ rpm |
| 1936 |
Tefifon |
Electromechanical, vinyl belt housed in a cassette, used an embossing technique using a stylus to imprint the information, was the first audio cassette |
| 1945 |
SoundScriber |
Analog, 4-6 inch discs, It recorded sound by pressing grooves into soft vinyl discs |
| 1947 |
Dictabelt (Memobelt) |
Analog, medium consisting of a thin, plastic belt 3.5" wide that was placed on a cylinder and rotated like a tank tread, developed by the Dictaphone company in 1947 |
| 1948 |
Vinyl Record |
Analog, with preemphasis and other equalization techniques (LP, RIAA); lateral grooves, horizontal stylus motion; discs at 7" (most 45 rpm), 10" and 12" (most 33⅓ rpm) |
| 1951 |
Minifon P55 |
Analog, magnetic wire on reel, 30 cm/s or about 11.8 ips was quickly adopted by many governments as being the ultimate "spy" recorder of its day |
| 1957 |
Stereophonic Vinyl Record |
Analog, with preemphasis and other equalization techniques. Combination lateral/vertical stylus motion with each channel encoded 45 degrees to the vertical |
| 1957 |
Dictet |
Analog, ¼ tape, 2.48 in/s, (3" reels housed 5.875 x 3 x .4375 inch cassette), developed by the Dictaphone Corp, was the very first dictation machine to use magnetic tape cassettes |
| 1958 |
RCA tape cartridge (Sound Tape) (Magazine Loading Cartridge) |
Analog, ¼ inch wide tape (stereo & mono), 3¾ in/s & 1.875 in/s, one of the first attempts to offer reel-to-reel tape recording quality in a convenient format for the consumer market |
| 1959 |
NAB Cart Tape (Fidelipac) |
Analog, ¼ inch wide tape in cartridge, 7½ in/s & 15 in/s, Introduced in 1959 by Collins Radio, the cart tape format was designed for use by radio broadcasters to play commercials, bumpers and announcements |
| 1962 |
4-Track (Stereo-Pak) |
Analog, 1⁄4-inch-wide (6.4 mm) tape, 3¾ in/s, endless-loop cartridge |
| 1963 |
Compact Cassette |
Analog, with bias. 0.15-inch-wide (3.8 mm) tape, 1⅞ in/s. 1970: introduced Dolby noise reduction |
| 1964 |
Sanyo Micro Pack 35 (Channel Master 6546) |
¼ inch wide tape housed in a transparent cartridge measuring 2.6 x 2.9 x 1.9 inches, tape was stored on two reels residing atop one another, keeping the cartridge compact |
| 1965 |
8-Track (Stereo-8) |
Analog, ¼ inch wide tape, 3¾ in/s, endless-loop cartridge |
| DC-International system |
Analog cassette format introduced by Grundig, Telefunken and Blaupunkt: 120 x 77 x 12 mm cassette with ¼ inch wide tape run at 5.08cm per second. |
| 1966 |
PlayTape |
Analog, ⅛ inch wide tape, endless-loop cartridge, introduced by Frank Stanton |
| 1969 |
Microcassette |
Analog, ⅛ inch wide tape, used generally for note taking, mostly mono, some stereo (developed in the early 80's). 2.4 cm/s or 1.2 cm/s |
| Minicassette |
Analog, ⅛ inch wide tape, used generally for note taking, 1.2 cm/s |
| 1970 |
Quadraphonic 8-Track (Quad-8) (Q8) |
Analog, ¼ inch wide tape, 3¾ in/s, 4-channel stereo, endless-loop cartridge |
| 1971 |
Quadraphonic Vinyl Record (CD-4) (SQ Matrix) |
Analog |
| 1975 |
Betamax Digital Audio |
Digital |
|
|
Analog. Dolby Stereo cinema surround sound |
| 1976 |
Elcaset |
Analog |
| 1978 |
Laserdisc |
Digital/Analog |
| 1982 |
Compact Disc (CD-DA) |
Digital. Linear PCM (LPCM) |
| 1985 |
|
Digital. Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) |
| 1985 |
|
Digital. Sound Designer (by Digidesign) (SD and DIG formats) |
| 1986 |
High Definition Compatible Digital (HDCD) |
Digital. Redbook compatible physical CD containing 20–24 bit information (uses linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM) |
| 1987 |
Digital Audio Tape (DAT) |
Digital. |
| 1992 |
Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) |
Digital, ⅛ inch wide tape, 1⅞ in/s, introduced by Philips and Matsushita in late 1992, marketed as the successor to the standard analog compact cassette |
| |
Digital. WAVEform (WAV) |
|
Digital. Dolby Digital surround cinema sound (also known as Dolby Stereo Digital until 1994) |
| MiniDisc (MD)[1] |
Digital. Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding (ATRAC) |
| 1993 |
|
Digital. Digital Theatre System (DTS), Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS), MPEG-1 Audio Layer III (MP3) |
| 1994 |
|
Digital. TwinVQ |
| 1995 |
RealAudio[1] |
|
| 1997 |
DVD |
Digital. Dolby Digital, Digital Theatre System (DTS) |
| DTS-CD |
Digital. DTS Audio |
| 1999 |
DVD-Audio |
Digital. Including Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP), Linear PCM (LPCM), Dolby Digital (AC-3) and Digital Theatre System (DTS) |
| Super Audio CD (SACD) |
Digital. Direct Stream Digital |
|
Digital. Windows Media Audio (WMA) |
| |
Digital. The True Audio Lossless Codec (TTA) |
| 2000 |
|
Digital. Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) |
| 2001 |
|
Digital. Advanced audio coding (AAC) |
| 2002 |
|
Digital. Ogg Vorbis codec |
| 2003 |
DualDisc |
Digital. Multiple formats encoded onto the same disc |
| 2004 |
|
Digital. Apple Lossless (ALE or ALAC) |
| 2005 |
HD DVD |
Digital. Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio |
| |
Digital. OggPCM |
| 2006 |
Blu-ray Disc |
Digital. Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio |
| 2008 |
slotMusic |
Digital. Usually at 320 kbit/s MP3 on microSD or microSDHC |
| Blu-spec CD |
Digital. PCM |
| 2009 |
SILK |
Digital. Codec developed by Skype, extended into the Opus codec. |
| 2010 |
DCP (Digital Cinema Package) |
Digital. Auro-3D codec |
| 2012 |
Opus |
Digital. Opus codec |
|