Pacific Audio & Video

Pacific Audio & Video (Pacific Audio & Video) was founded in January 1979 and is headquartered in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China. As the first audio-visual publishing company in mainland China to possess a complete set of modern recording, mastering, and pressing production lines, the establishment of Pacific Audio & Video marked the official transition of China’s audio-visual industry from the era of monaural records to that of stereo cassettes and high-fidelity sound.

During the wave of tape recorder popularization in mainland China from the 1980s to the early 1990s, Pacific Audio & Video played an irreplaceable role as a cultural pioneer. The company was the first to introduce internationally advanced analog multitrack recording equipment and Dolby noise-reduction technology, launching mainland China’s first batch of stereo cassette tapes and the first locally pressed CD. In terms of content planning, Pacific Audio & Video broke away from the monotonous format of gala songs prevalent at the time, releasing a vast number of original local pop songs with popular elements, classic film and television soundtracks, and high-quality recordings of traditional Chinese folk instrumental music. Its releases—including *Selected Songs by Zhu Fengbo*, *Fei Xiang’s Pop Song Collection*, and numerous classic era-defining cassette tapes—have sold tens of millions of copies in total, forming the core auditory memories of an entire generation of Chinese people.

With the entry of multinational record company and the rise of digital music, Pacific Audio & Video underwent a period of business transformation in the early 21st century. However, as a major national repository of audio-visual archives, it preserves an extremely vast and precious collection of analog-era master tapes. In recent years, Pacific Audio & Video has responded to the demands of the high-end physical media collecting and audiophile markets by launching the “Classic Master Tape Rescue and High-Fidelity Reissue Project,” which involves the large-scale use of modern high-resolution remastering technologies (such as HQCD, SACD, and vinyl records) to reissue its historical catalog. In the context of broader music industry research, Pacific Audio & Video is not merely a commercial record label, but also a national-level sound archive documenting China’s social changes and the evolution of physical music media over nearly half a century.