The Origin Story
t’s hard to believe today, but in the early days of hi-fi, there was little recognition of the ‘garbage in, garbage out’ philosophy. The signal was the signal, amplifiers just made it bigger, and it was your loudspeakers that made all the difference between good sound and bad sound. No matter that the art of LP reproduction had remained substantially unchanged since 1948 when Peter Goldmark, head of research at CBS-Columbia in the US, had delivered a lightweight tone-arm and sapphire needle to play his new 12-inch 33⅓rpm vinylite LP with microgrooves (the 45rpm 7-incher arrived the following year from RCA Victor).
