Digital Needle: Ripping vinyl records with a scanner (2013)
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Re: Digital Needle: Ripping vinyl records with a scanner (2013)
#2Thinking about a simpler system... how about getting a camera on a turntable recording a video while the record turns. It would then be possible to track a line with an specified width in the video and turn the changes in a piece of this line it into a waveform.
Re: Digital Needle: Ripping vinyl records with a scanner (2013)
#3I remember wondering whether a laser "needle" could work. IIRC the format has some funky EQ and other things to make a physical needle work better.
Re: Digital Needle: Ripping vinyl records with a scanner (2013)
#4I remember wondering whether a laser "needle" could work. IIRC the format has some funky EQ and other things to make a physical needle work better.
Already exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable
Re: Digital Needle: Ripping vinyl records with a scanner (2013)
#5Other related projects:
http://recherche.ina.fr/eng/Details-projets/saphir
https://irene.lbl.gov/Re: Digital Needle: Ripping vinyl records with a scanner (2013)
#6This is art!
Re: Digital Needle: Ripping vinyl records with a scanner (2013)
#7Other related projects: http://recherche.ina.fr/eng/Details-projets/saphir https://irene.lbl.gov/
Re: Digital Needle: Ripping vinyl records with a scanner (2013)
#8Stero channels aren't encoded in the depth and radial axes. They're encoded in the same plane, but rotated 45 degrees, so a mono record player (depth only) plays a balanced sum of each channel.
Edit: mono is radial only, not depth.
Re: Digital Needle: Ripping vinyl records with a scanner (2013)
#9I remember wondering whether a laser "needle" could work. IIRC the format has some funky EQ and other things to make a physical needle work better.
not cheap, but yeah it works great.
I actually got to hear one once. Extremely neutral and high-res, but the record has to be super clean because with the laser, you will hear every little speck of dust. Also it doesn't work with colored vinyl, iirc.
edit: they use 5 different lasers to get the data out of the groove, go read the section on their site, it's actually really intricate and cool
> the format has some funky EQ and other things to make a physical needle work better
Yes, in order to fit the high bandwidth music signal into a groove with a fixed width, the bass is EQed down and treble EQed up, since for a constant velocity sine wave, a low frequency wave would take up more physical width on the record than a high frequency wave. Without this EQ, you would only be able to store a small amount of music on a record. When the record is played, your phono preamp applies an inverted EQ curve to restore the signal to its original frequency response.
In the past, there were lots of different vinyl equalization curves, but the RIAA curve has been standard for decades now.
Re: Digital Needle: Ripping vinyl records with a scanner (2013)
#10I remember wondering whether a laser "needle" could work. IIRC the format has some funky EQ and other things to make a physical needle work better.
The funky EQ is the RIAA curve[1] - by essentially rolling off the bass and boosting the treble you can fit more on a disc, it attenuates some of the clicks and pops and is kinder on the vinyl and needle.
It's trivial to invert in software, and as another response points out, there is indeed a working laser record player - although the record needs to be extensively cleaned before playback or it doesn't work very well.