6 ms·

Pretty amazing! Reminds the article from 2002 which had to be one of the biggest Slashdot moment for me, from somebody who wrote code to play music from a scann

Pretty amazing! Reminds the article from 2002 which had to be one of the biggest Slashdot moment for me, from somebody who wrote code to play music from a scanned image of an LP. http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~springer/DigitalNeedle/index.html http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~springer/DigitalNeedle/index.html

Nition 10y ago
That's interesting, the guy says in that post the he assumes the depth modulation is one channel and the side-to-side is the other channel for a stereo recording. But actually they're both at 45 degrees[1]. It's a clever system because not only does it encode two channels with some of the "better" side-to-side movement (up/down is harder to get fidelity out of), it comes out that that the sum of the channels causes side-to-side movement while the difference causes up and down, so they play on old mono record players as well. I wonder what his code actually did, and if maybe he could have got a better result. [1] http://www.vinylrecorder.com/stereo.html http://www.vinylrecorder.com/stereo.html
- jacquesm 10y ago
  It's amazing that someone would go through all that trouble and get that detail wrong. There is also the RIAA correction curve to take care of (that was my first encounter with that acronym). The sound played back is pretty eerie, probably some day some alien somewhere will replay our planet earth gold plated recording like that and wonder why our sound encoding sucks if at the same time we can make spacecraft. See also: http://irene.lbl.gov/ http://irene.lbl.gov/ There was also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable They were about to go mainstream when the CD happened.
  - Nition 10y ago
    Good point. For anyone who doesn't know about the EQ curve on records, it's basically a big bass cut and a big treble boost. Bass causes huge wobbles in the groove so it's cut, and treble is hard to pick up, so it's boosted. Then you just do the reverse on playback. Also a good point that there's nothing on the Voyager record instructions about this...
js2 10y ago
Ah, apparently that work was re-invented a decade later: Some of the world’s earliest disc recordings, dating from the late 1880’s, exist today only as pictures in books or magazines. The discs themselves were lost long ago, leaving little hope that their sounds could ever be heard again. But sound media historian Patrick Feaster has developed a method for extracting sound from these prints, bringing to life rare audio content thought lost to history. Feaster, who works for the campus Media Preservation Initiative, discovered one such print in an 1890 German periodical housed in the stacks at Indiana University Bloomington’s Wells Library. It represents the oldest gramophone-type recording available anywhere for listening today — the earliest audible ancestor of all of the world’s vintage vinyl. By “playing” the inked spiral, we can again hear the voice of gramophone inventor Emile Berliner reciting the poem Der Handschuh by Friedrich Schiller. https://mediapreservation.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/extracting-audio-from-pictures/ https://mediapreservation.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/extractin...
- microcolonel 10y ago
  Ironically, it is no longer possible to listen to the audio in that webpage.
  - terinjokes 10y ago
    Looks like this is a CMS issue, the underlying content is still there: [0]: http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/der-handschuh.mp3 http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/der-handschuh.mp3 [1]: http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/sidebar-1.wav http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/sidebar-1.wav [2]: http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/sidebar-2.wav http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/sidebar-2.wav [3]: http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/sidebar-3.wav http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/sidebar-3.wav [4]: http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/sidebar-4.wav http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/sidebar-4.wav

Nition 10y ago

That's interesting, the guy says in that post the he assumes the depth modulation is one channel and the side-to-side is the other channel for a stereo recording. But actually they're both at 45 degrees[1]. It's a clever system because not only does it encode two channels with some of the "better" side-to-side movement (up/down is harder to get fidelity out of), it comes out that that the sum of the channels causes side-to-side movement while the difference causes up and down, so they play on old mono record players as well. I wonder what his code actually did, and if maybe he could have got a better result. [1] http://www.vinylrecorder.com/stereo.html http://www.vinylrecorder.com/stereo.html

jacquesm 10y ago
It's amazing that someone would go through all that trouble and get that detail wrong. There is also the RIAA correction curve to take care of (that was my first encounter with that acronym). The sound played back is pretty eerie, probably some day some alien somewhere will replay our planet earth gold plated recording like that and wonder why our sound encoding sucks if at the same time we can make spacecraft. See also: http://irene.lbl.gov/ http://irene.lbl.gov/ There was also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable They were about to go mainstream when the CD happened.
- Nition 10y ago
  Good point. For anyone who doesn't know about the EQ curve on records, it's basically a big bass cut and a big treble boost. Bass causes huge wobbles in the groove so it's cut, and treble is hard to pick up, so it's boosted. Then you just do the reverse on playback. Also a good point that there's nothing on the Voyager record instructions about this...

js2 10y ago

Ah, apparently that work was re-invented a decade later: Some of the world’s earliest disc recordings, dating from the late 1880’s, exist today only as pictures in books or magazines. The discs themselves were lost long ago, leaving little hope that their sounds could ever be heard again. But sound media historian Patrick Feaster has developed a method for extracting sound from these prints, bringing to life rare audio content thought lost to history. Feaster, who works for the campus Media Preservation Initiative, discovered one such print in an 1890 German periodical housed in the stacks at Indiana University Bloomington’s Wells Library. It represents the oldest gramophone-type recording available anywhere for listening today — the earliest audible ancestor of all of the world’s vintage vinyl. By “playing” the inked spiral, we can again hear the voice of gramophone inventor Emile Berliner reciting the poem Der Handschuh by Friedrich Schiller. https://mediapreservation.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/extracting-audio-from-pictures/ https://mediapreservation.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/extractin...

microcolonel 10y ago
Ironically, it is no longer possible to listen to the audio in that webpage.
- terinjokes 10y ago
  Looks like this is a CMS issue, the underlying content is still there: [0]: http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/der-handschuh.mp3 http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/der-handschuh.mp3 [1]: http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/sidebar-1.wav http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/sidebar-1.wav [2]: http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/sidebar-2.wav http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/sidebar-2.wav [3]: http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/sidebar-3.wav http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/sidebar-3.wav [4]: http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/sidebar-4.wav http://indiana.edu/~medpres/Feaster/sidebar-4.wav