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> That's only true if people keep making the playing devices. I think that's also a lot of the charm of vinyl: the technology is transparent, direct and simple

> That's only true if people keep making the playing devices. I think that's also a lot of the charm of vinyl: the technology is transparent, direct and simple, and a child could literally build a functional player in two minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJa6Ik6xmiU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJa6Ik6xmiU

david-given 11y ago
Erm. Not really. Not if you want to play anything other than 78s. 78s were mono, and the data was encoded via a vertical movement of the stylus. A needle-and-paper-cup player will work fine on one of these. Modern records are stereo, and the data is encoded as two channels, so the needle moves in two directions; these directions are diagonal to the plane of the record. The only real way to build a needle that will play these is via a magnetic pickup on the other end of the needle. These are rather non-trivial to build. Once you've done that, there's an additional complication, which is that the dynamic range of the vinyl isn't up to reproducing the audio signal; low notes at high volume require large displacements and the grooves are too close together to allow this (even if it can move fast enough, which I'm unsure about). So you encode the audio signal in a standard way before pressing it onto the vinyl, compressing the low frequencies and... expanding? the high ones. The record player then undoes this encoding after reading the signal off the disk. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization for the full details. Of course, getting a decoder is as simple as ordering the standard part and wiring it in. But now you've got a full electronic system, and it's decidedly non-trivial to build. Modern vinyl has a lot of subtlety and sophistication to it. If you use a needle-and-paper-cup player on a 33, it'll make noises that sound a bit like music, but actually playing it properly is highly non-trivial.
- ferongr 11y ago
  Not to detract from anything you said, but a DIY phono stage with RIAA EQ is trivial to build.
- p1mrx 11y ago
  A stereo record should still work on a needle-and-cup player; the two channels will just get munged together. The point is not that you can make a good player in 2 minutes, but rather that you can make one at all.

david-given 11y ago

Erm. Not really. Not if you want to play anything other than 78s. 78s were mono, and the data was encoded via a vertical movement of the stylus. A needle-and-paper-cup player will work fine on one of these. Modern records are stereo, and the data is encoded as two channels, so the needle moves in two directions; these directions are diagonal to the plane of the record. The only real way to build a needle that will play these is via a magnetic pickup on the other end of the needle. These are rather non-trivial to build. Once you've done that, there's an additional complication, which is that the dynamic range of the vinyl isn't up to reproducing the audio signal; low notes at high volume require large displacements and the grooves are too close together to allow this (even if it can move fast enough, which I'm unsure about). So you encode the audio signal in a standard way before pressing it onto the vinyl, compressing the low frequencies and... expanding? the high ones. The record player then undoes this encoding after reading the signal off the disk. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization for the full details. Of course, getting a decoder is as simple as ordering the standard part and wiring it in. But now you've got a full electronic system, and it's decidedly non-trivial to build. Modern vinyl has a lot of subtlety and sophistication to it. If you use a needle-and-paper-cup player on a 33, it'll make noises that sound a bit like music, but actually playing it properly is highly non-trivial.

ferongr 11y ago
Not to detract from anything you said, but a DIY phono stage with RIAA EQ is trivial to build.
p1mrx 11y ago
A stereo record should still work on a needle-and-cup player; the two channels will just get munged together. The point is not that you can make a good player in 2 minutes, but rather that you can make one at all.