Soundstream Inc. was the first United States audiophile digital audio recording company, providing commercial services for recording and computer-based editing.
Company Soundstream was founded in 1975 in Salt Lake City, Utah, by Thomas Stockham. The company provided worldwide on-location recording services to Telarc, Delos, RCA, Philips, Vanguard, Varèse Sarabande, Angel, Warner Brothers, CBS, Decca, Chalfont, and other labels. They manufactured a total of 18 digital recorders, of which seven were sold and the rest leased out. Although most recordings were of classical music, the range included country, rock, jazz, pop, and avant-garde. The first US live digital recording was made in 1976 by Soundstream's prototype 37 kHz, 16-bit, two channel recorder. New World Records recorded the Santa Fe Opera's performance of Virgil Thomson's The Mother of Us All, and provided Soundstream with a stereo feed from their multitrack console. Soundstream demonstrated this recording at the Fall 1976 AES Convention; however the resulting record was pressed not from the digital master but from the analog tape that New World recorded themselves concurrently. Critiques of the recording, most notably from Telarc's Jack Renner and Robert Woods, led directly to the improved four-channel, 50 kHz rate recorder that was used for all of Soundstream's future commercial releases. Also in 1976, Soundstream restored acoustic (pre-electronic) recordings of Enrico Caruso, by digitizing the recordings on a computer, and processing them using a technique called "blind deconvolution". These were released by RCA Records as "Caruso – A Legendary Performer". In subsequent years Soundstream restored most of the RCA Caruso catalog, as well as some RCA recordings by Irish tenor John McCormack. Soundstream's first commercially released recording, Diahann Carroll With the Duke Ellington Orchestra Under The Direction Of Mercer Ellington – A Tribute To Ethel Waters (on the Orinda label) appeared in January 1978. Over the next three years, almost 50% of all classical music recorded digitally used Soundstream equipment, over 200 recordings in all. The Canadian rock band, True Myth, recorded their self-titled debut album using the Soundstream unit, the first Canadian digital recording. The band recorded the album live to two-track stereo in Jack Richardson's studio, Nimbus Nine, located in Toronto, Canada. Unlike its competitors, Soundstream's analog circuitry was transformerless, permitting a frequency response to 0Hz (DC). This accounted for the "bass drum heard round the world" review of the 1978 Telarc recording of Frederick Fennell: The Cleveland Symphonic Winds. Soundstream collaborated with Telarc for several years, producing legendary symphonic recordings; the earliest ones are chronicled in Renner. The care with which Telarc selected and used its microphones and audio console, combined with the Soundstream recorder, created a gold standard for audiophile recording. Telarc has re-released many of its original Soundstream recordings in SACD format. Soundstream recordings made before the advent of the CD were released as high-quality vinyl LP albums. Despite analog playback, many of these releases were sufficiently impressive to gain an early acceptance for digital audio. The recording industry's transition to digital was further facilitated by the many demonstrations given by Dr. Stockham, whose articulate explanations of digital audio theory and practice were renowned. In 1980, Digital Recording Corporation (DRC) acquired Soundstream. DRC attempted to develop a home digital player that would use a photographically reproducible optical card as opposed to the mechanically pressed CD. This effort was eclipsed by the rise of the CD, leading to the company's demise in 1985.
Technology The company developed its four-channel, 16-bit, 50 kilosamples-per-second (ksps) recorder in 1977. The Soundstream Digital Tape Recorder (DTR) consisted of a modified Honeywell 5600E instrumentation transport and analog and digital circuitry designed and built by Soundstream. There were two series of DTR's built. The first series (SN 1–4) was produced from ~1977 to 1979 and the second series (SN 5- 13) was produced from ~1980 to 1981. While being tape format compatible and looking nearly identical from the outside, the later series are easily identified by the second set of tape transport control buttons. Some internal cards are not 100% compatible between the two series.
Digital Tape Recorder
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