I remember when stereo recordings first came out. Before that, we played 78 or 33 RPM (revolutions per minute) LP (long play) record albums or single song 45's. Most people I knew didn't have any such thing as a stereo system - a small record player would be common. High fidelity and stereo introduced us to the big sound and soon stereo systems with separate tuners, amplifiers and speakers were common, along with integrated units that were sometimes good furniture.
Besides records, many music aficionados used tape to record and store music. We started with reel-to-reel tapes and eventually 8-tracks and cassette tapes. But it was still 2 channel stereo and stayed that way for a long time. The recording industry had equipment capable of recording more than two simultaneous tracks (most studio work is done in 8 or more tracks), but there was no way to put the extra track information on a standard record or tape.
What is interesting is that the evolution to multi-channel sound occurred not in the music industry, but the film industry. Most movies these days have either Dolby 5.1 channel sound (3 front speakers, two rear, and a subwoofer) or DTS (similar channels but better quality). It's rare to find a recent movie in merely stereo. The recording industry is definitely behind, and I don't see any change in the future.
I think one of the stumbling points is that the recording industry doesn't want to abandon the CD format for DVD. CD format does not support 5.1 channel sound, whereas DVD of course does. But since DVDs hold so much more data (music), the recording industry would have to put more music on each piece sold - something they are reluctant to do. You could probably fit 10 of today's albums on one DVD.
The interesting change for me is that the concept of the "stereo" as the centerpiece for music in the household is changing. The amplifier section is still needed, but as I said it has to be upgraded to 5.1. But, almost nobody uses tapes any more, and even less old vinyl records. FM radio is only popular in cars. The last active device in the stereo stack was the CD player.
But now, most people "rip" the CDs they buy and store the digital music files on their PCs. And, in fact, many PCs these days have better sound systems and speakers than older stereos did. So, even though you buy the music on CD (or download it from the Internet), the stack of stereo components has now been replaced by the PC.
As an example, I have a fairly expensive 200 CD Sony carousel player. Rather than have to fish the CDs out of those "jewel cases", my wife and I thought it would be much easier to just load all the CDs into the carousel and pick the one we want by number. Well, now that sits idle. All of the music we listen to is now on our PCs and is generally played through the PC sound systems. And we can pick the disks by name, not by number, and create our own custom mixes.
And even if you want to use your big stereo amplifier, you can get cables (or wireless connections) that link your PC to your stereo, using your PC sound system to drive the stereo amplifier and speakers.
We also play our digitized music in our portable MP3 players when bike riding or at the gym. But since you have to "rip" the CDs first to do this, it's just another reason to store your music on the PC's hard drive.
And things will certainly change again soon. The recording industry is under tremendous pressure to figure out how to generate revenue in the digital age, and digital storage formats even more capacious than DVD are in the works. But the advantage of digital is that even though the storage medium may change, the music file format should be compatible.
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport / Oak Island area. You can visit his website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail him at bsc@bobseidel.com).