Audio is Quirky When
it Comes to Its Vocabulary
We were listening to a CD the other night, and my wife said
"I've always liked that album." Then she said "I guess you can't call them
'albums' any more." It's true that most people don't use the term very much these
days (except, perhaps, when referring to The Beatles' white album -- what else could you
call it?), but in truth there's no good reason for that. Actually, there's no less reason
to call a CD an album than a vinyl LP.
But audio has always been unpredictable in how it names
things, especially when it comes to its recording media. It's wildly inconsistent, but the
names have the virtue of being what people want to use, rather than what some marketing
department dictates.
Take "album," for example. Originally,
compilations of recorded music really were albums: books with heavy cardboard covers and
record sleeves for pages. Because the 78s these contained weighed a lot, these were
unbelievably awkward to handle, but they were a mainstay of the record business for
decades.
The last 78s were issued in North America in 1959, and with
their disappearance went the album, but the name stuck to the new long-playing format, and
continued to be used interchangeably with the term "LP" until that format died.
Even "LP," standing for "long-playing
record," is a historical relic. Certainly the LP was longer-playing that what it
replaced, but for most of its life, most people would have though of it as "standard
playing." But "LP" was a convenient term, and it's still used to describe
that format fifty-odd years after its introduction.
The competing singles format was never referred to in terms
of its playing time (it was short, and could have been called something like
"regular"). The industry called the discs "singles," but everybody
else called them "45s," referring to their rotational speed.
There was briefly a version of the 45 that could cram in
about double the music, and that was called "extended play" (EP), but it was
short-lived on this continent. It was popular in Europe for some time because records were
very expensive there and an in-between format was an economical way to buy records. Here,
when the record companies did use the technology to fit, say, the Animals' "House of
the Rising Sun" or Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" on the small disc, they
gave it no special name.
Then there are "records" and
"recordings." It's standard English to keep a record of something -- expenses,
for instance -- but when it came to music, the word "record" came to mean the
physical piece of plastic you put on your turntable; the music itself and the way it was
put together was a "recording." The latter is still true, but most people
wouldn't call a CD (or a tape, for that matter) a record. The usage continues mostly in
the phrase "record company."
Somewhere along the way, the generic term
"phonograph" disappeared as well. It does conjure up the image of windup record
players, and it only survived in the term "phono cartridge" and as the label on
a receiver's phono input (if it even has one).
And then there's "vinyl." Certainly most of the
mechanical recordings made after the 78 went into decline were made of polyvinyl chloride,
but not all. In Canada, Decca records were pressed on some other material that I always
thought of as slate. Its stiffness did resist warping, but it was brittle and could become
very noisy if you didn't handle it properly. Eventually even Decca dropped this stuff and
produced vinyl records. Canadian 45s were invariably vinyl, but many American singles were
pressed on other materials.
These were exceptions; the vast majority of LPs and 45s
were made of vinyl, but it does seem strange to describe a recording system in terms of
what the recording medium is made of. When you pop a cassette into its player, it's
unlikely you'll think of listening to some Mylar.
Then there was the question of what to call that flat black
thing when talking primarily of its physical attributes -- or rather, how to spell it.
Audio magazines everywhere tended to call them "discs," spelled with a
"c." The alternative "k" spelling is every bit as valid, of course,
and is universal in the world of computers. In audio, however, only the trade mag Billboard
insisted in using the "k" version for years.
They dropped that when the only discs they talked about
were CDs and laserdiscs, both of which had names that were originally proprietary, had
standard logos, and were spelled with a "c." Still, elsewhere, I've seen the
phrase "compact disk" in computer contexts, referring to CD-ROM; that's
understandable, but clearly wrong.
Tape has had its share of variation as well. When Philips
introduced its version of cartridge tape, they wanted it to be called a "Compact
Cassette" except if it was already recorded, in which case it was supposed to be a
"Musicassette". Both were unwieldy, and the format has been simply
"cassette" from the start.
When the cassette was competing with the 8-track cartridge,
TV commercials hawking both tended to call the cassette a cassette, but the 8-track simply
a "tape". When the 8-track disappeared, however, the cassette remained a
cassette, at least in advertising, although many users just call them tapes. (The same
thing is happening today, as marketers tend to sell you movies on DVD or video).
And, while it isn't restricted to software, there's some
confusion about the terms "high fidelity" and "stereo." Many think of
the first as referring to something like your dad's old system in glorious monaural
(monophonic, really -- "monaural" means using only one ear). Stereo has come to
mean two-channel sound, when it really means anything other than one. It really includes
multichannel surround sound, but there seems to be a need to have a separate phrase for
that.
My guess is that it will be "home theater," but
who can tell what this quirky, anarchic market will choose?
...Ian G. Masters
ian@mastersonaudio.com
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