
Forgotten audio formats: The Highway Hi-Fi - tintinnabula
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/03/highway-hi-fi-car-vinyl-player/
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rwmj
Techmoan has been doing a great series of videos on obsolete formats. Here's
the Playtape: [http://www.techmoan.com/blog/2016/1/13/heres-something-
old-t...](http://www.techmoan.com/blog/2016/1/13/heres-something-old-the-
playtape.html) and the CED video disk:
[http://www.techmoan.com/blog/2016/3/13/retro-tech-the-rca-
ce...](http://www.techmoan.com/blog/2016/3/13/retro-tech-the-rca-ced-
videodisc.html) (video on a vinyl disk read using a stylus, what could
possibly go wrong!)

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InclinedPlane
The coolest thing he's covered, I think, that I'd never heard of before is the
tefifon:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBNTAmLRmUg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBNTAmLRmUg)

It's basically a continuous loop of tape (similar to an 8-track) but with
groves recording music (like a vinyl record). It didn't see much popularity
outside of Germany and then was essentially obsoleted by magnetic tape. Such a
fascinating technology though. In a parallel Universe it probably would have
been vastly more popular.

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bootload
_" Nor was there any skimping on the software technicalities, for the Highway
Hi-Fi music discs were heavy, quality pressings of 135-gram vinyl with ultra-
fine grooves—over 216 grooves per centimetre."_

135g Vinyl isn't that high quality when market releases between 120 and 140g
especially compared to the high-end 180g Grundman [0] on my desk.... what I
didn't know was this was the birth of the 33rpm LP that I bought and listened
too as a kid.

 _" But the players had made a mark: microgroove records were an indirect
spin-off, serving as slabs of vinyl that were capable of holding one hour of
music. These 60-minute discs were being pressed and sold in their millions by
the mid-'70s. The neatly titled Gold Hour Records was one of the biggest
labels to benefit from that format's success."_

The 33rpm 'microgroove' record is what we now know as the LP or Long Play
record.

[0]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSwejSlZFFE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSwejSlZFFE)

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gcb0
they leave out that Motorola was a spin of from RCA and Ericsson (? maybe
Phillips?) to create that car-vitriola monstrosity

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joezydeco
Motorola had nothing to do with this project.

Motorola was also founded in the late 1920s in Chicago. There is no connection
to RCA and/or Ericsson.

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yuhong
I wonder what would happen to record companies if DAT existed in the 1960s or
1970s (before they really consolidated).

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TheOtherHobbes
DAT couldn't have existed because the technology wasn't there. Audio DACs were
lab-grade items that cost four or five figures. The smaller digital tape packs
in the 1970s had a capacity of maybe 256Kb per reel.

And it wouldn't have made any difference, because in-car audio worked just
fine with 8-track carts, which were available from the mid-1960s. Compact
cassettes took over about a decade later.

~~~
yuhong
I know, I am talking about the issue of how the music industry tried to kill
it for example.

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mchahn
Wow, they got George Harrison and Muhammad Ali for their PR? That must have
cost a fortune.

~~~
alricb
If you look closely at the pictures, you can see that Ali and Harrison are
actually holding 45 rpm records (large center hole) and not 16 2/3 rpm records
(small center hole, like a 33 1/3 rpm record).

The Highway Hi-Fi was discontinued in 1957 -- Harrison joined the Quarrymen in
1958 at the earliest and Ali didn't turn professional until 1960.

In addition, they aren't even in Chryslers in the pictures: Ali is in a '59
Cadillac and Harrison is in a '64 Jaguar.

