Casa del Suono Museum, Niche 6 New sound: from analog to digital Casa del Suono Museum, Niche 6 New sound: from analog to digital

Niche 6. A century after its birth, the plastic disc that bore in its grooves the trace of sound vibrations concluded its history. The 1980s witnessed the substitution of the old disc with an entirely new means of storing data: the Compact Disc. The CD adopted an optical rather than mechanical system of memorisation, and above all a revolutionary method of recording based on digital instead of analogical technology. The new system, in fact, was not tied to a single type of data storage. By its very nature, digitalised sound,like all digital information, can be memorised on both optical and magnetic storage systems, and can be transmitted using the telecommunications network. At the end of a process that has taken over a hundred years, the functions tied to the reproduction and transmission of sound, once reserved for strictly separate spheres, are therefpre now really at the disposal of everyone.

Niche 6, details