Music means a lot to us, By just putting a record on it helps us process emotions, escape
reality, or just get really pumped up about something.
But how did that sound get on a piece of vinyl in the first place?
And how does it make music to our ears.
Hey Audiophiles Julia here for DNews
I know it seems like a simple thing, but how do we record sounds on to vinyl?.
How does this vibration produced in our throats get carried through the air, and capture on
disc?
Well it wasn’t easy.
for centuries there were attempts to transcribe sound on to paper.
Back in the mid-19th century, scientists were studying how sound waves move through the
air and vibrate.
Inspired by studies of the inner ear, French scientist Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville,
tried to recreate the ear drum with a thin membrane.
Attaching this membrane to a stylus or etching pen, he could trace the vibrations that hit
that membrane onto a piece of paper or glass.
But it took at least 20 years for anyone to realize that hey… these 2d lines on a paper,
if turned into 3d grooves in something, could be played back!
The earliest attempts at recording the human voice go back to the 1870s.
And like most inventions of that era, was developed at Thomas Edison’s labs.
Once we had sound waves figured out, there had to be a way to mark them down somehow
and re-play them later.
Edison’s labs came up with a cylinder covered in tin foil with a needle attached to a thin
membrane called a diaphragm.
As sound waves hit the diaphragm they jiggled the needle which etched the vibrations and
movements into the cylinder.
But he wasn’t the only one working on it.
Emile Berliner developed a similar system, but his had hand crank that turned not a cylinder
but a flat disc cutting 3-dimensional grooves of sound waves directly into it.
The needle or stylus would “read” the grooves, producing a sound that was amplified
by a horn or cone.
And thus the gramophone was invented in 1887.
And that’s still how analog sound is played today.
Records work on a similar principle, only instead of recording it fresh each time, it's
recorded to a master disc and then pressed into vinyl Today’s record players have the
stylus, usually made from diamond or sapphire, attached to a tone arm, that’s the thing
you pick up and move to put on a record.
Tone arms can be straight or curved, and there’s some debate as to which is better.
And the sound isn’t amplified mechanically, they are carried through the tone arm to a
cartridge containing coils in a magnetic field.
These coils take the vibrations and amplify them electronically through speakers.
But on a warmer note, many record fans say they sound just that.
They believe records sound better and warmer than other forms of recording because of its
fidelity.
But that’s an arguable case.
But maybe the rise of record players lately is simply because many vinyl-philes say they
have an emotional connection to records.
Some say it’s a nostalgia factor, others like that records are so tangible, they’re
something you can really see and feel.
Maybe it’s the appeal of the ritual, the taking off of the jacket, placing the record
on the table and finally get the stylus, literally in the groove.
So while some might get a little down on digital, it can be awesome, I mean modern scientists
have even found a way to listen to those Scott de Martinville’s recordings using a virtual
stylus.
Seriously.
it’s creepy.
give it a listen, there’s a link in the description.