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I love records (78s and vinyl) for the tactile and visual experience-- and the fact that I can get something for a few bucks at the thrift store and not feel to

I love records (78s and vinyl) for the tactile and visual experience-- and the fact that I can get something for a few bucks at the thrift store and not feel too bad about my toddler ruining it trying to put the needle on. To that end I have stuck to cheap, sturdy, school-grade equipment and mostly secondhand records. It's so fascinating to me that an inert physical disc is engraved with sound waves that are reproduced by dragging something along to return them to sound, in the case of the 78s without the need for anything electrical in between. It's an added bonus that it has zero opportunity to inspire screen time for my kid, who absolutely doesn't need to stare at a screen while listening to music.

Animats 4y ago
in the case of the 78s without the need for anything electrical in between. For fully mechanically recorded records you have to go back to pre-1927 Edison Diamond Disks. Or the real deal, Edison cylinders. Edison cylinders are actually rather good recordings. The mechanical playback system. with no amplifier, introduced most of the distortion. Modern playbacks, using a modern record pickup with a suitably large-sized stylus, are quite good. Here are some from cylinders made around 1900.[1] Those include Sousa's band playing Sousa's marches, led by Sousa himself. The ultimate playback device is IRENE. This was built for the Library of Congress. It does a full 3D scan of the entire disk or cylinder surface, and a detailed 3D model of the surface is created. That's turned into audio by a program that simulates a stylus tracking through the grooves. IRENE is used on very old, fragile items. It's even possible to put broken shards back together in 3D and recover the audio. For real authenticity, there are reproducing pianos. These are player pianos, but with a better recording system, one capable of recording key pressure while a live pianist played the piano. While the Duo-Art system had binary-coded pressure values, the Welte-Mignon system was analog. Mostly. Here's a Welte-Mignon roll being played.[2] The holes at the outer edges of the roll are encoding the key pressure. The ones in the middle indicate which keys. MIDI, from over a century ago. If you're going to go retro, go all the way. If you just want to listen to music, it doesn't get any better than 24 bit audio. (16 bits may not be enough for really soft passages, where all the high bits are zero and you may be down to 6 bit audio.) [1] https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/photosmultimedia/recordings.htm https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/photosmultimedia/recordings.h... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8K5Yh0aLhA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8K5Yh0aLhA
- drewzero1 4y ago
  I do have one of those Edison diamond disks in my collection, though no playback device that can handle the vertical signal in the groove. My ~1917 Silvertone phonograph does fine for me with the more conventional 78s. My grandpa used to tell me that they donated the clockwork out of their record player as scrap metal for the war effort, so they listened to music by spinning the records by hand and holding a fingernail in the groove. That's something you can't do with pretty much any other recorded medium, aside from print.

Animats 4y ago

in the case of the 78s without the need for anything electrical in between. For fully mechanically recorded records you have to go back to pre-1927 Edison Diamond Disks. Or the real deal, Edison cylinders. Edison cylinders are actually rather good recordings. The mechanical playback system. with no amplifier, introduced most of the distortion. Modern playbacks, using a modern record pickup with a suitably large-sized stylus, are quite good. Here are some from cylinders made around 1900.[1] Those include Sousa's band playing Sousa's marches, led by Sousa himself. The ultimate playback device is IRENE. This was built for the Library of Congress. It does a full 3D scan of the entire disk or cylinder surface, and a detailed 3D model of the surface is created. That's turned into audio by a program that simulates a stylus tracking through the grooves. IRENE is used on very old, fragile items. It's even possible to put broken shards back together in 3D and recover the audio. For real authenticity, there are reproducing pianos. These are player pianos, but with a better recording system, one capable of recording key pressure while a live pianist played the piano. While the Duo-Art system had binary-coded pressure values, the Welte-Mignon system was analog. Mostly. Here's a Welte-Mignon roll being played.[2] The holes at the outer edges of the roll are encoding the key pressure. The ones in the middle indicate which keys. MIDI, from over a century ago. If you're going to go retro, go all the way. If you just want to listen to music, it doesn't get any better than 24 bit audio. (16 bits may not be enough for really soft passages, where all the high bits are zero and you may be down to 6 bit audio.) [1] https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/photosmultimedia/recordings.htm https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/photosmultimedia/recordings.h... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8K5Yh0aLhA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8K5Yh0aLhA

drewzero1 4y ago
I do have one of those Edison diamond disks in my collection, though no playback device that can handle the vertical signal in the groove. My ~1917 Silvertone phonograph does fine for me with the more conventional 78s. My grandpa used to tell me that they donated the clockwork out of their record player as scrap metal for the war effort, so they listened to music by spinning the records by hand and holding a fingernail in the groove. That's something you can't do with pretty much any other recorded medium, aside from print.