Welcome to my first ever Day Thread! Please be gentle with me, as I want this to be special.

The fundamental concept behind digital audio recording dates back as far as 1938, but the history of digital recordings getting released commercially begins with Something by Steve Marcus & Jiro Inagaki. Recorded on January 25, 1971, it was released (only on LP, of course) in February 1972. No editing or mixing of the tracks were involved, since the early digital technology could only record and play back a raw signal.

The first digital recording made in the US to be released commercially was On Green Dolphin Street by Archie Shepp. It was recorded on November 28, 1977 at Sound Ideas Studios in New York City, using a Denon DN-043R brought over from Japan. It could record up to 8 channels at 14-bit, 47.25kHz.

Sony eventually used their marketing power to steer the recording industry into adopting their PCM-1600 digital recorder (List price: $40,000 in 1978 dollars) which recorded a 16-bit/44.1kHz signal onto U-matic analog video tape, and 16/44.1 then became the official standard for the upcoming Compact Disc format, as well as the digital audio tracks on Laserdisc movie releases. This decision would cause major headaches down the road, because computers run smoothly when dealing with multiples and powers of 2 (like 48kHz,) introducing an awkward number like 44,100 creates the potential for processing errors and corruption of the signal.

Don’t let the Day Thread get corrupted!