To hear music before Edison, you either had to know how to play an instrument or go to a concert. The Gramophone brought music home, as did the radio, but the sound quality was nothing like a concert experience. After WWII, quality music reproduction became the province of the home hobbyist, thanks to the development of high-fidelity stereophonic recording and playback, otherwise known as hi-fi.

Hi-fi was actually the convergence of several technologies. The first was the concept of stereo sound from multiple speakers that simulated a live performance. The first patents for "binaural," or stereophonic recording and reproduction, were applied for in 1931 (awarded in 1933) to British engineer Alan Blumlein. At the same time, Bell Labs researcher Arthur C. Keller was developing binaural recordings using two styli cutting twin tracks on the same wax records. In 1933, the first stereo "broadcast" was made of a concert in Philadelphia piped to Washington, D.C., by telephone.

But recording, playback and broadcast technology at the time was ill equipped to handle true stereo signals. The transistor, which created more efficient signal amplification, was the second breakthrough on the road to hi-fi. Next was the refinement of the physical playback media – magnetic tape and vinyl records.
In 1888, Oberlin Smith authored a scientific journal article describing a method of magnetic sound recording presaging today's audiotape. In 1893, Danish inventor Valdemar Poulson magnetized steel cable to create wire recording, the predominant audio recording technology for the next 40 years. Between 1932 and 1935, the German industrial giant I.G. Farben AG developed the first magnetic tape recorder, the Magnetophon. The machine was co-developed by Farben and the German General Electric (AEG), and then manufactured by Telefunken. By 1935 Adolf Hitler was using magnetic tape to record and broadcast speeches, unbeknownst to western engineers. In between, in 1939, Marvin Camras of Armour Research invented a wire recorder that was used by the military throughout World War II.


In 1942, the first stereo tape recordings were made by Helmut Kruger for German Radio in Berlin. Army signal corpsmen were befuddled by early morning radio concert performances from Berlin that clearly weren't being broadcast live but just as clearly could not have been recorded because of their high-fidelity sound.
By the end of the war, rumors were pervasive in the American Army Signal Corps that the Germans had developed high-fidelity tape recorders. During the summer of 1945, corpsmen scoured the French and German countryside, acquiring the remnants of the German recording and radio industry. Major John T. Mullin found two Magnetophons and sent them, along with several reels of red oxide tape made by Farben's BASF division, to his San Francisco home and started to tinker.

Back home, Mullin worked with Colonel Richard Ranger, who in 1924 had invented the precursor to the modern fax machine and who, while serving in the Army during World War II, also had discovered the Magnetophon while poking through the ruins of the Third Reich. But each man decided to pursue his own commercialization path.

In May 1946, Mullin presented his rebuilt Magnetophon tape recorder, the first stereo tape recorder in the free world, to the Institute of Radio Engineers. Bing Crosby's engineers quickly hired Mullin and his machine to tape the singer's radio show.

Two years later, a tiny company founded by Russian émigré Alexander Poniatoff called Ampex Corp., with Mullin's help, introduced the Model 200 stereo tape recorder, making high-fidelity stereo recording commercial. 3M, under the Scotch brand name, made the first magnetic recording tape, first paper then acetate-based.
Several companies began manufacturing tape recorders in the late 1940s, including Ranger's Rangertone, Magnecord and Brush.

HiFi: Home Stereo
While Mullin, Ampex and Crosby were inaugurating the era of audiotape in 1948, Peter Goldmark, the same scientist who was developing CBS' color TV system, invented the 33-rpm long-playing vinyl record. The new disc had much longer playing time and much higher fidelity than the 78-rpm wax discs that were then the norm. To play the new vinyl recordings, General Electric introduced a sapphire tipped phono cartridge, which replaced the heavier, mostly steel or osmium needles.
The following year, RCA introduced the 45-rpm vinyl disc, the seven-inch "single" that would become the primary method for disseminating rock-and-roll music. Also in 1949, Magnecord introduced the first stereo tape recorder/player for consumers.

Despite the appearance of vinyl records, most early hi-fi recordings were limited to reel-to-reel tape. London Records brought practical high-fidelity stereo to vinyl records in 1958, but even then not all recordings were released in stereo. For instance, even the first Beatles records in the mid-1960s, although recorded in stereo, were released in mono on their initial vinyl releases.

Hackers, hobbyists and other assorted engineers began to cobble together amplifiers and stereo speakers to play back these new high fidelity recordings at home. Throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, small companies founded by such entrepreneurs as Avery Fisher, Jim Lansing, Sidney Harman, Hermon Scott, Henry Kloss, Amar Bose, Paul Klipsch and Saul Marantz sprang up to manufacture hi-fi equipment.

Some of the developments in this period include the first high-fidelity speaker, Klipsch's corner horned speaker in 1946, Kloss' acoustic-suspension speaker; in 1956, the first transistorized amplifier from Fisher Electronics, developed in a factory on the site now occupied by the Lincoln Center symphonic hall that bears the company founder's name; the first audio receiver, developed by Harman-Kardon; and, for private listening, the first commercial stereo headphones from John Koss in 1958.
Meanwhile, the hundreds of retailers in Radio Row in downtown Manhattan that had been selling amateur radio gear now began to sell hi-fi equipment, and new stores selling the new stereo and TV gear such as Harvey and Lafayette, opened. Similar audiophile stores began popping up in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and along Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, as well as a growing national chain, Radio Shack.

In 1961, Zenith research scientist Carl Eilers brought hi-fi stereo to FM, which the FCC mandated. The first transistorized radio tuners, amplifiers and receivers also made their debuts during this fertile development period.

By the late 1960s, the hi-fi and television business had grown so much that Jack Wayman, an Electronic Industries Association senior vice-president, determined that a specialized consumer electronics trade show was necessary. The first International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was held in New York, then the center of the TV and hi-fi business, in 1967.

In 1963, Philips Electronics N.V. developed the audiocassette, which made listening to tape much easier, thanks in part to a new noise reduction technology that removed background tape hiss. Ray Dolby, who, while just starting college had helped invent video recording more than a decade earlier, developed this noise reduction scheme in 1967. It was around this time that a former used car mogul, Earl "Mad Man" Muntz introduced the four-track endless-loop tape, and then bought the rights to and popularized William Lear's eight-track audiocassette format, which had first appeared in Ford cars in 1965. And in the late 1960s, Len Feldman and Jon Fixler developed quadraphonic four-channel sound.

In 1963, Philips Electronics N.V. developed the audiocassette, which made listening to tape much easier, thanks in part to a new noise reduction technology that removed background tape hiss. Ray Dolby, who, while just starting college had helped invent video recording more than a decade earlier, developed this noise reduction scheme in 1967. It was around this time that a former used car mogul, Earl "Mad Man" Muntz introduced the four-track endless-loop tape, and then bought the rights to and popularized William Lear's eight-track audiocassette format, which had first appeared in Ford cars in 1965. And in the late 1960s, Len Feldman and Jon Fixler developed quadraphonic four-channel sound.

The audiocassette always had seemed a poor cousin to the vinyl LP – until the cassette player left the house. Cassette decks first made it into cars and, eventually, pockets with the introduction of the Sony Walkman in 1979, completely changing the way America commuted. Instead of a communal experience, music now was a matter of personal choice. The individuality the Walkman brought to music listening contributed to the era being dubbed the "me" generation. By 1983, the audiocassette had usurped the vinyl record as the leading format for pre-recorded music, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and would stay that way for nearly a decade.

In Japan, a struggling drummer named Daisuke Inoue found another use for the audio cassette. Customers at lounges at which his singerless band performed often requested songs they could get up and sing along to. One group of fans asked if he could provide tapes of his music so they could sing along with them on an upcoming vacation. Instead, Inoue jury-rigged a red-and-white painted wooden box with a microphone, an amplifier and an 8-track tape machine built in that played a sing-along song when a 100-yen coin was dropped in. His band recorded instrumental tracks and his new company, Crecent, leased his "8-Juke" – soon dubbed karaoke, or "empty orchestra" in Japanese – to bars and hotels.

The karaoke fad swept Japan and by the mid-1970s almost every bar in the Far East had a karaoke machine. Unfortunately, Inoue had failed to patent his machine and, by 1987, competition from large companies producing bigger and better machines forced his small company out of business. But the popularity of karaoke prompted Time magazine to name Inoue one of Asia's most influential people (along with Mohandas Gandhi and Mao Zedong) and, in 2004, he was awarded an Ig Nobel Peace Prize for "providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other."

Surveys indicated that soon every American had at least three audiocassette players – one in the home, one in the car and one portable. But soon, even the audiocassette would be overtaken by a new audio playback technology.