Why the RIAA curve became the industry standard — technology, politics, and economics

Why did RIAA become the standard?

Question answered on this page: Among the many EQ curves that existed, why did the RIAA curve become established as the sole industry standard? Was it because it was technically the best?

In short

The RIAA curve became the standard not because it was "the best curve," but because three conditions — technology, politics (industry consensus-building), and economics (hardware lock-in) — converged simultaneously in the 1950s.

Factor 1: technology — the arrival of the feedback cutter head

The widespread adoption of the feedback cutter head (Westrex 2A/2B, later 3D) in the early 1950s was the decisive change that made standardization technically feasible.

Earlier cutter heads had significant frequency response irregularities of their own. Recording engineers achieved their target recording curve by combining the cutter head's characteristics with the recording equalizer. In other words, different cutter heads required different equalizer settings, and variations in on-site practices made it likely for the resulting recording characteristics to vary as well.

The feedback cutter head used negative feedback to achieve a nearly flat frequency response in the head itself. This meant that the recording curve could be controlled by the recording equalizer alone, making standardization independent of the cutter head realistic for the first time.

→ For details on the feedback cutter, see blog post Pt.18, section 18.1

Factor 2: politics — cross-industry consensus-building

The RIAA curve was not the unilateral decision of a single company, but the result of a democratic process involving cooperation among multiple industry organizations.

NAB/NARTB (the broadcasters' trade association) had been working on standardization since 1942, accumulating experience and credibility in the field. AES (the Audio Engineering Society) proposed a standard playback curve in 1951 as a compromise among the various companies' curves, providing a forum for cross-industry discussion. And RIAA (the record manufacturers' trade association) organized a technical committee that brought together the chief engineers of the five major labels: Columbia, RCA Victor, Decca, Capitol, and Mercury.

The memberships of these organizations overlapped, and consensus-building proceeded across organizational boundaries.

Another factor not to be overlooked is the experience of World War II. During the war, American audio engineers had built cooperative relationships under military auspices (such as the so-called "Sapphire Group"), and this trust became the foundation for consensus-building in postwar standardization.

→ The Sapphire Group and its relationship to AES: blog post Pt.16

→ The RIAA technical committee and the standardization process: blog post Pt.18

In parallel with this institutional consensus-building, engineers in the field were also strongly calling for standardization. One year before the RIAA standard was issued, in April 1953, Charles P. Boegli of Cincinnati Research Company contributed an article, "New Developments in Phono Equalizers," to Radio & Television News that captures the mood of the time:

"Some months ago it appeared that the equalizer situation was becoming simpler, that is, that fewer and fewer equalizers would be required to compensate satisfactorily for most commercial pressings. The current trend of events, however, seems to be in the opposite direction! The need for some sort of standardization is becoming ever more pressing and, since collectors have a habit of retaining their discs after they acquire them, such standardization should certainly be carried out before vast numbers of discs are issued with all sorts of varying characteristics—if it isn't already too late."

Within months of this article, the 1953 NARTB recording/playback standard (identical to New Orthophonic) was adopted, followed the next year by the new AES playback curve and the RIAA recording/playback characteristic.

How difficult this consensus was to achieve is also apparent from an account written in 1957 by RCA engineer R.C. Moyer. According to Moyer, there were "at least eight different recognized characteristics being used or to be considered during the early 1950's," and the New Orthophonic characteristic adopted by RCA (identical to RIAA) was designed "to combine the desirable features of the more generally used recording characteristics into a single characteristic" (R.C. Moyer, "Standard Disc Recording Characteristic," RCA Engineer, Vol. 3, No. 2, Oct.–Nov. 1957). The RIAA curve was not a theoretically optimal solution, but a compromise born from the existing practices of the industry's major players.

The outcome of this compromise was reflected two years later in a 1956 consumer guide, The Saturday Review Home Book of Recorded Music and Sound Reproduction (Second Edition, 1956). Edward Tatnall Canby traced the NAB → AES → ORTHO/RIAA/NARTB trajectory in these terms:

"Finally, three organizations, making slight improvements on the AES curve, hit upon almost identical new curves ... These three recording curves are so much alike that most amplifiers and equalizers have a common position for them. The great majority of new records are cut ORTHO-RIAA-NARTB, and all we need now is a simpler name!"

— Edward Tatnall Canby, ibid., pp.112-113

Because the three organizations adopted identical time constants, the understanding that "three names exist but the curves are effectively the same" had already reached even general-audience consumer books.

McKnight, who was at the center of the standardization work, also recorded later that AES TSA-1-1954 and the RIAA's 1954 standard adopted the same characteristic in the same year (J. Audio Eng. Soc. 30(4), p.244, April 1982). The fact that AES and RIAA were separate organizations yet arrived at the same conclusion at the same time stands as a symbol of how far cross-industry consensus-building had advanced.

Factor 3: economics — hardware lock-in

Even with technical feasibility and industry consensus, these alone would not have made RIAA an irreversible standard. The decisive factor in RIAA becoming the sole de facto standard was that hardware was designed with RIAA as the assumption.

Recording side: stereo cutting equipment. When the stereo LP was introduced in 1958, the stereo recording systems used for cutting (the cutter head and recording amplifier combination) were designed with RIAA recording characteristics as the standard. Applying non-RIAA recording characteristics on this equipment, while not technically impossible, was impractical in production.

Playback side: the shift in consumer amplifiers. Monaural amplifiers of the late 1950s included multiple EQ positions (Columbia LP, NAB, AES, 78 rpm, etc.) to accommodate older records pressed before 1954, including 78 rpm discs. However, with the onset of the stereo era, amplifiers offering non-RIAA positions declined rapidly. By the mid-1960s, surveys of product catalogs and circuit diagrams confirm that 80–90% of consumer amplifiers had only the RIAA position.

A telling detail underscores this shift: some early stereo amplifiers applied non-RIAA EQ to the left channel only. In other words, the manufacturers judged that there was no need to apply non-RIAA curves to stereo records.

→ RIAA-based design of recording equipment: blog post Pt.19

→ The evolution of phono EQ positions in consumer amplifiers: blog post Pt.22

Summary: a chain of consensus and lock-in

The process by which the RIAA curve became established as the standard can be summarized as follows:

1. The spread of the feedback cutter head made standardization independent of the cutter head technically feasible
2. Building on wartime cooperation, the three organizations NAB, AES, and RIAA coordinated to form a cross-industry consensus
3. Stereo-era cutting equipment and consumer amplifiers were designed with RIAA as the standard, making the choice irreversible through hardware

RIAA did not win as "the best curve." Rather, "the curve everyone could agree on" became the only option through a generational turnover in hardware. This is the more accurate understanding.

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