Which singer invested in the Ampex company in 1947 (which developed North America's first commercial reel-to-reel tape recorder), was the first to pre-record his radio shows and to master his commercial recordings on magnetic tape?
Reel-to-reel audio tape recording use Ampex eight track "Sel Sync" machines for multitracking. Ampex went on to develop the first practical videotape recorders in the early 1950s to pre-record Crosby's TV shows. Inexpensive reel-to-reel tape recorders were widely used for voice recording in the home and in schools before the Philips compact cassette, introduced in 1963, gradually took over. Cassettes eventually displaced reel-to-reel recorders for consumer use. However, the narrow tracks and slow recording speeds used in cassettes compromised fidelity. Columbia House carried pre-recorded reel-to-reel tapes from 1960 to 1984. Following the example set by Bing Crosby, high-speed reel-to-reel tape recorders rapidly became the
Reel-to-reel audio tape recording invested $50,000 in a local electronics company, Ampex, to enable Mullin to develop a commercial production model of the tape recorder. Using Mullin's tape recorders, and with Mullin as his chief engineer, Crosby became the first American performer to master commercial recordings on tape and the first to regularly pre-record his radio programs on the medium. Ampex and Mullin subsequently developed commercial stereo and multitrack audio recorders, based on the system invented by Ross Snyder of Ampex Corp. Les Paul had been given one of the first Ampex Model 200 tape decks by Crosby in 1948 and went on to