How do lp records work

Music can also be stored on flash memory music players by recording sound using something called transistors. Transistors basically amount to tiny electrical switches. And of course, there are compact discs. Does your brain hurt yet? With the arrival of the digital age, all of these modes of recording and retaining information could be stored and saved even if there was no power source. Unfortunately, the digital age has some drawbacks, especially when it comes to music. Long before the digital age came along, devices like Thomas Edison's phonograph were born.

The phonograph is considered the granddaddy of modern record players today. The word phonograph actually means sound-writer. Essentially, the phonograph recorded and stored sound mechanically by etching sound waves or more accurately, the electrical signal of the sound waves with a needle, onto tinfoil cylinder. The cylinder was rotated by a hand crank and the needle moved to cut a groove into the tinfoil, recording the sound wave signal.

A needle and amplifier were used to reverse the process in the case of the phonograph, the amplifier was a horn and the recorded sound was then played back. Of course, the phonograph had many limitations, but it was the early vision of what would later become known as the record player. Originally, Thomas Edison created the phonograph as a way to record dictation, with intentions for using it in office work and as a way for teachers to record lessons.

Not long after Thomas Edison set aside his vision to work on other projects, Emile Berliner came along and developed similar technology, except instead of etching grooves to record sound waves into a tinfoil coil, the grooves were cut into a flat disk using a needle. Another needle was used to read the grooves and it was called the gramophone. It has a much closer resemblance to record players today. Unlike the phonograph, which could record and play sound from one machine, the gramophone could only playback sound.

Disks or records to play on the gramophone were made separately, which opened the door to recordings being produced in mass to be shared with listeners over and over, using the gramophone to play them. Sometimes the terms gramophone and phonograph are used interchangeably, but both are considered early precursors to modern-day record players and used the needle and groove design that has lasted through the ages.

Essentially a magnet, wrapped in a wire coil, attached to the stylus. The needle that sits in the grooves of the record; normally made from sapphire or diamond.

Both stylus and cartridge are lowered, by the tone arm, onto the spinning record. To preserve the groves, the stylus should be placed onto the lead in — a 6mm blank space at the outer rim of the record. A stylus, or record needle, is one component in a transducer — a device that converts electrical energy into mechanical energy or vice versa.

In the case of a record player, this transducer is a cartridge — composed of a stylus, cantilever, magnets, coils, and body — which converts the mechanical energy of the recorded vibrations into sound waves, which are amplified and broadcast through speakers.

A stylus is cone-shaped and typically made from diamond or other gemstone or hard metal. In a stereo record groove, the right channel is recorded on the right wall, and the left channel is recorded on the left. While mastering engineers preparing a recording for transfer to vinyl will adjust the groove pitch to account for dynamics in the program i. Too much low frequency information combined with a lot of information spread across the stereo field can result in the stylus jumping out of the groove and skipping.

Too shallow and narrow a groove, and the recorded sound can lose its stereo image and suffer from low volume. Furthermore, a record only has so much space to contain the grooves. The length of your program — as well as the levels and frequencies contained in your recording — will affect the depth and width of the grooves, and ultimately the quality of the playback.

The bigger the vibrations the louder the sound. The grooves you can see on a vinyl record are actually sound waves or more like a type of fingerprint of the sound waves captured in a lacquer disc that we call a vinyl record. These three-dimensional grooves cut in the vinyl record are a recording of how the sound waves behave as they move through the air.

A typical record player has a type of needle called a stylus that is placed gently on the vinyl record resting in the beginning of one of the grooves. As the vinyl disc steadily rotates the stylus moves through the wavy three dimensional grooves. The stylus is a tiny crystal of sapphire or diamond mounted at the very end of a lightweight metal bar like a needle.

As the crystal vibrates in the groove, its microscopic bounces are transmitted down the bar. The stylus fits onto the end of an electromagnetic device called a cartridge, containing a piezoelectric crystal.

The metal bar presses against the crystal and each time it moves, it wobbles the crystal slightly, generating an electrical signal. These signals are fed out to the amplifier to make the sounds you hear through your speakers or headphones.

Not all record-player cartridges use piezoelectricity to convert sound vibrations to electrical signals.