Sound-on-film in the context of "Dolby Stereo"

A soundtrack is a recorded audio signal accompanying and synchronised to the images of a book, drama, motion picture, radio program, television program, or video game; colloquially, a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film, video, or television presentation; or the physical area of a film that contains the synchronised recorded sound.

In movie industry terminology usage, a sound track is an audio recording created or used in film production or post-production. Initially, the dialogue, sound effects, and music in a film each has its own separate track, and these are mixed together to make what is called the composite track, which is heard in the film. A dubbing track is often later created when films are dubbed into another language. This is also known as an M&E (music and effects) track. M&E tracks contain all sound elements minus dialogue, which is then supplied by the foreign distributor in the native language of its territory.

A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before sound motion pictures became commercially practical. Reliable synchronization was difficult to achieve with the early sound-on-disc systems, and amplification and recording quality were also inadequate. Innovations in sound-on-film led to the first commercial screening of short motion pictures using the technology, which took place in 1923. Before sound-on-film technology became viable, soundtracks for films were commonly played live with organs or pianos.

The primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema were taken in the mid-to-late 1920s. At first, the sound films which included synchronized dialogue, known as "talking pictures", or "talkies", were exclusively shorts. The earliest feature-length movies with recorded sound included only music and effects. The first feature film originally presented as a talkie (although it had only limited sound sequences) was The Jazz Singer, which premiered on October 6, 1927. A major hit, it was made with Vitaphone, which was at the time the leading brand of sound-on-disc technology. Sound-on-film, however, would soon become the standard for talking pictures.

16 mm film is a historically popular and economical gauge of film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film (about 2⁄3 inch); other common film gauges include 8 mm and 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical (e.g., industrial, educational, television) film-making, or for low-budget motion pictures. It also existed as a popular amateur or home movie-making format for several decades, alongside 8 mm film and later Super 8 film. Eastman Kodak released the first 16 mm "outfit" in 1923, consisting of a Ciné-Kodak camera, Kodascope projector, tripod, screen and splicer, for US$335 (equivalent to US$6,182 in 2024). RCA-Victor introduced a 16 mm sound movie projector in 1932, and developed an optical sound-on-film 16 mm camera, released in 1935.

Vitaphone was a sound film system used for feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects made by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1931. Vitaphone is the last major analog sound-on-disc system and the only one that was widely used and commercially successful. The soundtrack is not printed on the film, but issued separately on phonograph records. The discs, recorded at 33+1⁄3 rpm (a speed first used for this system) and typically 16 inches (41 cm) in diameter, are played on a turntable physically coupled to the projector motor while the film is projected. Its frequency response is 4300 Hz. Many early talkies, such as The Jazz Singer (1927), used the Vitaphone system. The name "Vitaphone" derived from the Latin and Greek words, respectively, for "living" and "sound".

The "Vitaphone" trademark was later associated with cartoons and other short subjects that had optical soundtracks and did not use discs.

Optical sound is a means of storing sound recordings on transparent film. Originally developed for military purposes, the technology first saw widespread use in the 1920s as a sound-on-film format for motion pictures. Optical sound eventually superseded all other sound film technologies until the advent of digital sound became the standard in cinema projection booths. Optical sound has also been used for multitrack recording and for creating effects in some musical synthesizers.

The Golden Age of Argentine cinema (Spanish: Época de Oro del cine argentino or other equivalent names), sometimes known interchangeably as the broader classical or classical-industrial period (Spanish: período clásico-industrial), is an era in the history of the cinema of Argentina that began in the 1930s and lasted until the 1940s or 1950s, depending on the definition, during which national film production underwent a process of industrialization and standardization that involved the emergence of mass production, the establishment of the studio, genre and star systems, and the adoption of the institutional mode of representation (MRI) that was mainly—though not exclusively—spread by Hollywood, quickly becoming one of the most popular film industries across Latin America and the Spanish-speaking world.

Argentine industrial cinema arose in 1933 with the creation of its first and most prominent film studios, Argentina Sono Film and Lumiton, which released ¡Tango! and Los tres berretines, respectively, two foundational films that ushered in the sound-on-film era. Although they were not national productions, the 1931–1935 films made by Paramount Pictures with tango star Carlos Gardel were a decisive influence on the emergence and popularization of Argentine sound cinema. The nascent film industry grew steadily, accompanied by the appearance of other studios such as SIDE, Estudios Río de la Plata, EFA, Pampa Film and Estudios San Miguel, among others, which developed a continuous production and distribution chain. The number of films shot in the country grew 25-fold between 1932 and 1939, more than any other Spanish-speaking country. By 1939, Argentina established itself as the world's leading producer of films in Spanish, a position that it maintained until 1942, the year in which film production reached its peak.