Reading Weekend: 30 materials on sound, audio brand history and film industry

Ahead of the weekend, and we decided to make for you a selection of materials from our " Hi-Fi World ". Posts under the cat are devoted to interesting facts about sound, music in the movie, as well as the history of the emergence of religious audio brands. In particular, let us tell you how they invented the sound of a lightsaber, what is the fate of the Radiotekhnika plant, and how to count the sound from a pack of chips.


Photo by Daniel Novta CC

Brand history

• Soviet legend: the history of the plant "Radiotekhnika". “Radio Engineering” owes its appearance to the resourcefulness of the Latvian entrepreneur and the competition law. In this article we talk about the turning points in the fate of the iconic brand: from the seizure of the plant by the German army to the sale of the company at an auction in the late nineties.
• "Conservative sound": Talk Arslab and Penaudio. Interview with Artyom Faermak, the founder of Audiomania, about brands and approaches to creating acoustics. He will tell about the history of the emergence of Arslab acoustics, the collaboration of the Finnish brand Penaudio and the role of tradition in the design of Hi-Fi and High-End technology.
• Arslab: accurate calculation as art. We offer to see with your own eyes how high-end equipment is manufactured at the Arslab plant. Factory workers will show all the stages of manufacturing acoustics: from design to assembly and polishing.
• Yuri Fomin: “Acoustic system is a complex but accurate mathematical model.” Design Bureau Yuri Fomin worked with brands such as Defender, Jetbalance and AVE. He is currently working on the Arslab brand. In this interview, he will explain what engineers are guided by, when they create a new product, and why the columns are as they are.
• History of the Ortofon brand: from sound films to pickup heads. Ortofon was a pioneer in the industry and remains one of the market leaders to this day. Her journey began with the creation of a film dubbing system. Today she releases pickup heads that are used by both music lovers and DJs. As it happened, we will tell in the article.
• "From Austria with love": acquaintance with AKG. Frank Sinatra and Stevie Wonder collaborated with this company. She also develops microphones, which are not afraid of the Arctic conditions. Material about how AKG has evolved from a tiny workshop in Vienna into an audio giant company.
• “Do not stop and try new things”: A little about the history of Lehmannaudio. Another excursion into the history of manufacturers of high-end-technology - in this article we are talking about the German Lehmannaudio. Our material is about the first developments of the creator of the company Norbert Lehmann, and how the brand's products won the respect of music lovers.

About music

• Five of the best albums by Rick Rubin. Rick Rubin is a legendary producer who has worked with many legendary performers: from Metallica to Johnny Cash. This article will briefly, but succinctly, talk about Rick’s five albums, which changed both the music and those who listened to it.
• Elvis Presley: forever first. How did a truck driver become an idol for many generations of Americans and not only? And why a man who is considered a symbol of the most rebellious in the art world has never rebelled? What is he, rock and roll Elvis Presley? These and other questions will be answered in the material.
• "Wall": remember the legendary album Pink Floyd. Here we have collected the historical and little-known facts of one of the best-selling albums of all time. You will find out how the idea of ​​creating The Wall was born, how the album got on the big screen and in the opera houses and what the Berlin concert of the band remembered in 1990.
• Folk-alien: 6 albums of ethno-jazz. From the point of view of linguistics, the term "ethno-jazz" looks ridiculous, as a good example of tautology. But is it really? Maybe the presence of the ethno-component in the music depends on who listens to it and performs it? With examples of compositions we understand what ethno-jazz is.
• As Chaz Alfred did not become a legend of jazz: a story without morality. The article will tell about one saxophonist who recorded a great hit, and then abandoned music for 30 years. When he tried to start again, he failed. One of the millions of examples of life when a person could easily become “someone”, but for some reason did not.
• You never dreamed of, or 5 unusual versions of well-known songs. Not everyone has heard Smells Like Teen Spirit perform on the ukulele, and I Will Survive hit alt-rockers from Cake. Therefore, we decided to collect in one place these and other recordings of our beloved compositions in a new sound.

Photo by Cassowary Colorizations CC

Our reviews

• 15 of the brightest appearances of audio and video equipment on the big screen. We offer to evaluate our selection with the best cameo components of Hi-Fi-systems and DK: Sennheiser headphones, Sony cassette player with auto reverse, Rek-o-kut vinyl player and others.
• "Black Panther": from the life of cats prone to genocide and escapism. Review of the next superhero tape from Marvel, in which we analyze all the pros and cons of the film: from the storyline to the soundtrack. The article will be useful to those who are thinking about viewing the picture, because it allows you to evaluate without spoilers whether it is worth your time or not.
• "Immersion": fifty shades of blue. Unbiased opinion about Submergence - Wim Wenders' new picture from the book of the British war correspondent. We will tell why, in our opinion, this film is not the best in the director’s career, and which alternative tapes are more suitable for exploring Wenders’s work.
• "Form of water" Guillermo del Toro: "Beauty and the Beast" for adults. Subjective view of the Oscar-winning tape Mexican director. In the material we evaluate the work of the actors, the visual series and, of course, the sound track.
• "Big Game": "Thank you" for the ability to remain silent. The film “The Big Game” is based on real events: Molly Bloom really organized the largest underground casino in the USA, which was regularly visited by show businessmen, various investors and criminal elements. We will evaluate the camera work and installation, the images of the characters and the general atmosphere of the film adaptation.

Interesting sound

• "This is a hit": the history and records of music charts. Who came up with the idea to rate songs by popularity? What is the difference between the principles of drawing charts in different countries? And why did the charts take root only in the music field? Find answers to these and other questions in the article.
• “Sound in the Museum” - industrial design, modern art and creative experiments. We will show extraordinary art objects in which the main role is played by sound: sculptures “Bashe”, sound installations from industrial materials and unique projects demonstrating the “sound” life of insects.
• Rain, clank armor and liquid metal: how to create sound for the movie. Creating soundtracks is a complex process, but (most often) understandable: a suitable composition is selected for what is happening on the screen. But what if you need to transmit the sound of a shot of a laser gun? Professional shumoviki will answer this question. You will learn what Tarzan’s cry was “collected” from, how the sound of a lightsaber was invented, and what three ways you can “create” an automatic burst.
• What unusual musical instruments are used in the dub of horror movies. We continue to delve into the theme of soundtracks movies. This time it will be about creating sounds for horror. We will talk about water, yabahar and The Apprehension Engine (the system of instruments, sharpened by playing terrible sounds), as well as their role in creating an atmosphere of horror films.
• "Eight Beats": about the sounds in old games. The voice of the first video games has become a separate genre - 8 bit, which finds its admirers today. And here we recall, once the popular games of Computer Space, Pong, or console hits from Atari sounded.
• “Oh, no, again”: music in movies and TV shows that we hear too often. Why are some soundtracks intentionally used on the screen more often than others? Is it necessary to highlight certain character traits of the characters? Or maybe this approach helps to inform the viewer about the upcoming action? We understand the unobvious meaning of "hackneyed" compositions.
• “Gosh, a giant bug flew above me”: the SDK release for surround sound. It will focus on the features of the development of Google - Resonance Audio. You will learn how the technology works, what sound effects you can get and where it finds its application.
• Word for human speech: what he can do. The article tells about the product Descript, which is designed to edit audio files and is equipped with a transcription function. Talk about solution options (for example, export to other editors), and also introduce you to similar tools (VoCo, Lyrebird, Voysis, NowTranscribe and Trint).
• How to count the sound from a pack of chips, or what is a "visual microphone". Is it possible to restore audio using video? It turned out that it is possible: scientists from MIT are already engaged in the development of technology for this purpose. They managed to create a so-called visual microphone that can read sound from bricks, indoor plants and other objects by analyzing their microscopic vibrations caused by the propagation of sound waves. Read more about the technology of its potential capabilities, read inside.
• Wheel lira, vargan, kahon - tools that did not become mainstream. All these tools appeared hundreds of years ago, but did not receive mass recognition. In this article we pay tribute to them: we tell how they are arranged and how to play them, who uses them. The link also has video examples of playing these tools.

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A few more of our collections:

• Weekend reading: 5 books about music and musicians
• "Reading for the weekend": 30 materials about the amazing properties of sound and audio technology

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