Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical or mechanical inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording.

The first practical sound recording and reproduction device was the mechanical phonograph cylinder, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877 and patented in 1878. The invention soon spread across the globe and over the next two decades the commercial recording, distribution and sale of sound recordings became a growing new international industry, with the most popular titles selling millions of units by the early 1900s.

Acoustic analog recording is achieved by a small micriphone diaphragm that can detect changes in atmospheric pressure (acoustic sound waves) and record them as graphic sound waves on a medium such as a phonograph.

Digital recording and reproduction uses the same analog technologies, with the added digitization of the sonographic data and signal, allowing it to be stored and transmitted on a wider variety of media. The digital binary numeric data is a representation of the periodic vector points in the raw analog data at a sample rate most often too frequent for the human ear to distinguish differences in quality.