Jan 11 2006
Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies, has announced it has been awarded a Technical GRAMMY® Award by The Recording Academy® for its outstanding technical contributions to the recording field. This is the first Technical GRAMMY ever awarded to a communications research laboratory.
In this 1925 Bell Labs photo, musicians record a performance using an early system to electronically capture, amplify, and record sound onto a wax disk, making the recording session more natural and also dramatically improved the quality of the recorded sound. Prior to this innovation the musicians needed to all huddle around a large cone which would directly transfer sound vibrations to a wax disc with no electronic amplification or filtering. (Photo courtesy of Lucent Technologies Bell Labs)
The award is a Special Merit Award presented to individuals and/or companies who have made contributions of outstanding technical significance to the recording field. Technical GRAMMY Award recipients are determined by vote of the members of The Recording Academy Producers & Engineers Wing and The Academy's Trustees. The Technical GRAMMY Award will be presented on Feb. 7, at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre. The 48th Annual GRAMMY Awards will be held on Wednesday, Feb. 8, at STAPLES Center in Los Angeles, and will be broadcast live in high-definition TV and 5.1 surround sound on CBS from 8 – 11:30 p.m. (ET/PT).
From the invention of the telephone, the first device to electronically transmit and receive sound, to its more recent R&D projects for digital sound capture and delivery technologies, Bell Labs has been a consistent pioneer in both the foundational and applied technologies of modern sound recording, electronic transmission, and digital communications. Seminal Bell Labs sound and audio inventions include high fidelity recording (1925), single groove stereo recording (1933), stereophonic recording on film (1941), the laser (1958), today used in all CD and DVD players, the electret microphone (1966), and advances in audio compression to facilitate digital radio technology (1992 - 1999), which allows AM, FM, and satellite stations to broadcast near-CD quality music. For a complete timeline please visit http://www.bell-labs.com/sound.
Bell Labs continues to innovate in this space. Current research and development at Bell Labs has expanded to include audio as part of a blended multimedia experience, work on new digital compression technologies for delivering music and other medias over a wide variety of networks and devices, nano-based “micro-microphones” for dynamically directional, high quality sound recording, and flexible and tunable hypersensitive recording arrays for improved sound capture. Some of Bell Labs’ longer term research projects in this area include the investigation of new types of lasers, materials, and processing formats that have the potential to yield the next generation of high density media storage and advanced digital playback technologies.
“Bell Labs continues to be laser-focused on communication innovations, the fruits of which continue to enrich our everyday lives by providing continual improvements for how we create, capture, and enjoy digital entertainment such as music,” said Sid Ahuja, Vice President of Software Media Research whose center oversees current multimedia, digital entertainment, acoustics, and speech research efforts. “We are honored to be receiving this Technical GRAMMY and we look forward to making many more contributions to the field in the years ahead.”
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