When the VDT was founded in 1949 as the “Deutsche Filmtonmeister-Vereinigung” (German association of filmsound professionals), this department largely defined the horizon of its activities. Today, the Department of Music and Word Production aims to support sound producers with publications and workshops, and to provide interested parties with information on both the history and new developments in this field.
Although microphones and thus sound recordings had been around since the middle of the 19th century, it was not until around 1930 that stereophony was invented by Alan Dower Blumlein in Great Britain and Bell Labs in the US. Interestingly, the invention stemmed from the desire to make movement in film not only visible but also spatially audible.
Early sound film had already linked the two disciplines, but both stereophony and surround sound in the 1970s/80s can be traced back to the close partnership.
It was another 30 years before French radio added a fifth fundamental technology to the sound recording arsenal in 1964 with ORTF (Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française).
Quadraphony was introduced in the early 1970s, but more than this, the research of Michael Gerzon and the Oxford University Tape Recording Society, who devised Ambisonics, laid the foundations for the recording, construction and reproduction of immersive soundscapes.