Music: Same Old Phonographs

Rumors of new, improved methods of phonograph recording (on wire, film, etc.) have filled the wartime air. Last week one of the biggest U.S. recording companies, RCA Victor, said that, so far as its own products are concerned, there will be no such radical changes. Said RCA Victor: “In our opinion, nothing now contemplated in the laboratories or in use commercially at present shows any signs of offering such flexibility, tonal fidelity and simplicity, at low cost, as do the conventional disc and phonograph.”

The other members of the recording industry’s “big three” (Columbia, Decca) agreed. Experiments with wire and film had revealed a number of shortcomings. The cost of apparatus for playing wire and film recordings is still too high ($400 to $600). The quality of tone, at present, is inferior to that of discs. Experts conceded a limited postwar use for wire recording as developed by the U.S. armed forces, thought the wire recorder might in time replace dictaphones. But wire recordings cannot be printed from master records, like discs. Each must be re-recorded from the master, separately. With 60% of the recording industry’s output (in prewar years close to a million discs a week) devoted to popular music, the wire recording process would be far too slow.

Only one big novelty in record manufacturing was contemplated for postwar production: a new disc made from vinylite or other plastic, which will be 1) lighter in weight, 2) superior in surface qualities, 3) practically unbreakable.