Decomposition by Andrew Durkin

Author:Andrew Durkin [Durkin, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-91176-6
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-11-18T05:00:00+00:00

HIGH FIDELITY

Fans of recording often associate the music industry’s permanence marketing with the medium’s putative expressive authenticity, attained through high fidelity. The idea that “the voice of Melba can never die” assumes that Melba recordings actually captured the voice of Melba in the first place. Yet “high fidelity” contains a hidden compromise with authenticity (for which the word “fidelity” is of course a synonym)—an uncertainty suggested by the fact that the fidelity in question is merely “high,” not “total.” This is telling, and it points toward a deeper problem with the word “fidelity” and the authenticity it attempts to establish.

Emily Thompson argues that fidelity existed as an evaluative criterion from the very beginning of recording technology. At first it was a function of the phonograph’s role as an office dictation machine, and referred to little more than “intelligibility.” Later, when the phonograph was marketed as a device for playing music, “fidelity” meant “quality of tone,” a concept that referred to a recording’s overall “sound,” including the kinds of noises (surface noise, motor hum) produced by the machine itself—what I earlier called the “signature of technology.” Later still, “fidelity” would refer to the elimination of “tone”—the definition that would become most familiar to twenty-first-century listeners.

Yet the latter meaning, according to Thompson, emerged as early as 1915, when the sound of the machine was still clearly audible by today’s standards. In fact, while we might imagine that even the most ambitious marketing strategy would have been forced to posit “high fidelity” as a goal that would be attained eventually, advertisements repeatedly suggested that the goal had already been attained. As Andre Millard puts it, “The manufacturers of talking machines had always made exaggerated claims about the technology of their products.” By the middle of the century, for instance, they spoke of the “new miracles of war research,” even though they were essentially reproducing the same 78-rpm players with fancier, fresher labels. Indeed, the term “high fidelity” was used so recklessly that it eventually lost much of its semantic force—much like the word “authenticity” itself.

One early instance of how the concept of high fidelity was used in a marketing context appeared in a National Phonograph Company publication called The Phonograph and How to Use It, published in 1900. In a fictional scenario, “Mr. Openeer” arrives at a Christmas party with his wife:

As we fumbled with wraps and gloves in the silent hall of the house, our feelings were divided between personal discomfort and wonderment that no one was there to greet us. Suddenly there piped up a thin little voice seeming to come from nowhere. It grew louder and stronger, and we heard “Merry Christmas, merry, merry Christmas. Welcome, Mr. Openeer, we are glad to see you. Welcome, Mrs. Openeer; how is the baby? How did you leave Ponjo?” (Ponjo is our dog.) We looked around bewildered. The voice continued: “Take off your wraps; lay them on the table. James will see them safely laid away.” Astonishment gave way to curiosity, and we drew aside a curtain and found the cheery speaker to be—a Phonograph.

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