Lacquers were generally used from the 1930s to the late 1950s for recording and broadcast purposes and see limited use as of 2009. Lacquers have not always been used solely as a means of evaluating a tape-to-disc transfer or cutting the final master disc. They were used for many purposes before magnetic tape recorders became common, and in the modern era they are used by dance music DJs. They were used extensively in Jamaica by sound system operators in the late 1940s and 1950s. Acetates were often used as "demos" of new recordings by artists and record labels.
Disc mastering In preparation for a record pressing, acetates are used for quality control prior to the production of the stampers, from which retail copies of the record will be pressed. The purpose of the test acetate(s) (called, 'reference disks') in the mastering process is to allow the artist, producer, engineer, and other interested parties to check the quality of the tape-to-disc recording process and make any necessary changes to ensure that the audio fidelity of the master disc will be as close as possible to that of the original master tape. The actual stamper sets can be made either from oversized lacquers or from DMM blanks (see
Direct Metal Mastering).
Direct recording to record radio programs Before the introduction of
magnetic tape for mastering, disc recording was done "live" (see
direct to disc recording), although sometimes intermediate disc-to-disc editing procedures were involved. Before lacquer discs were adopted for the purpose, the master recording was cut into a disc of wax-like material that was too soft to be played non-destructively and had to be used as a mandrel on which to electroform a metal stamper, which was in turn used to make playable
pressings. Acetate blanks allowed high-quality playable records to be produced "instantaneously". Acetates were used in
radio broadcasting to archive live broadcasts, pre-record local programming, delay network feeds for broadcast at a later time, and provide programming "from home" on the
Armed Forces Radio Network. (In many cases, the AFRN disc is the only form in which a classic radio show has survived.) discs recorded at rpm were used for these one-off "
electrical transcriptions" beginning in the mid-1930s. Disc recorders designed for amateur home use began appearing on the market around 1940, but their high prices limited sales, and then
World War II brought their production to a halt. After the war, the popularity of such recorders greatly increased. It was not unusual for a
carnival,
circus,
amusement park, or
transit hub to offer disc recording in a booth for a modest fee. Countless discs were cut at parties and family gatherings, both for immediate amusement value and to preserve audio "snapshots" of these events and of the voices of relatives and friends. Schoolchildren and adults alike used them to practice speeches, amateur musical efforts were immortalized, and snippets of radio broadcasts were captured, all limited by the three- or four-minute maximum playing time of the 78 rpm large-groove format which was still standard for all home-use records. The home recorders typically had two tone arms, one for recording and the other for playback, and a red light to indicate recording was taking place. One problem with the process was the "string" of cut material that followed the recording tone arm as the groove was cut. This "string" could interfere with the recording process and required manual intervention to remove. This relatively bulky equipment, and the bulky discs, were hauled to remote locations such as
Yugoslavia (see
Milman Parry) or the
Mississippi Delta (see
Archive of American Folk Song) by
ethnographers,
linguists, and musical researchers. Substantial collections of these recordings are available to researchers at academic and national libraries, as well as
museums. During the very early tape era, around 1950, acetate discs and portable disc recorders competed with magnetic tape as a location-recording medium, both for broadcast and semi-pro use, but tape's several advantages quickly won the contest. Recording services hired to record weddings and other private events routinely captured them on tape, but because most homes of the 1950s and early 1960s were not equipped to play tapes, while nearly everyone had a record player, typically the recording was dubbed to disc and supplied to the client in that form and the original tape was recycled. Acetate discs are inherently less durable than some types of magnetic tape, and have the disadvantage of not being physically editable; unlike tape, acetates cannot be cut and spliced.
Black and dance music In the
dance music world,
DJs cut new or otherwise special tracks on acetates, in order to test crowd response and find potential hits. This practice started as early as in the 1960s in Jamaica, between
soundsystems, as a way of competing and drawing bigger crowds. These discs are known as
dubplates. Dubplates were used by reggae soundsystems worldwide, and later adopted by producers of various dance music genres, most notably
drum and bass and
dubstep. Trading dubplates between different DJs is an important part of DJ culture. Actual acetate dubplates are declining in popularity, and being increasingly replaced by CDs and
vinyl emulation software for reasons of weight, durability and overall cost. == Value ==