When was the first record created? Vinyl records: difference in formats
1888 - year of birth of the record
Back in 1888 Emil Berliner proposed recording information on a compact medium - a record. The recording was done on a spiral track, which turned out to be a simple and productive idea. Modern CDs and DVDs use the same recording system. The only drawback of the Berliner disk was that, unlike the Edison roller, it did not have the ability to record at home.
In the 60s of the 20th century, tape recorders began to be produced for home listening and recording, but their sound quality left much to be desired. At the end of the 19th century, gramophones began to be used to listen to records. They had a spring drive and a huge horn, from which sounds flowed like a river! No matter how unsightly this unit may look, the sound quality of this machine still makes many people buy them at auctions. The fact is that gramophones have the ability to filter high-frequency noise and clicks that occur when moving from one track of a record to another.
The plate wore out quickly
The only problem with vinyl records was the steel sound reader - it seriously scratched the record, so one varnish disc was enough for two or three listenings. Vinyl manufacturers quickly solved this problem: they began duplicating the record on the reverse side!
In the 20th century, the main producers of varnish discs in Russia were such enterprises as “Pishushchiy Amur”, “Pathee”. There were also branches of foreign recording companies: Zonophone Record, Bermener Record, Victor and Beka. In 1922, the Gramoplatinka association took full responsibility for producing records in Russia. They are produced in two formats: grand and giant.
Unbreakable records
The recording speed was typically 78 rpm, but standards varied from company to company, so some companies may have slower speeds. This is one of the reasons why it is difficult to transfer old vinyl records to digital media - spring drive recorders sometimes simply could not provide a stable recording speed.
Unbreakable records first appeared in 1938. The diameter of one disk was 25 centimeters, and the plates were made from cellulose acetate. To release, say, a live recording, you had to combine the records into sets. Even the speeches of politicians were recorded and released in the same way.
"Melody"
In 1964, the well-known All-Union record company “Melodiya” was created, thanks to which all the manufacturing plants of varnish discs of the USSR were united. At this time, children's record players began to be produced - they came with “toy records”, on which fairy tales and songs of pioneers were recorded. Magazines and such popular publications as Krugozor and Kolobok began recording on records. They included poems, fairy tales, and conversations. Melodiya even produced sound recordings for filmstrips. Special records were produced for setting up the playback system; such records were included with equipment purchased in the store.
Despite the fact that we live in a digital world, vinyl records are coming back into fashion! Many are willing to pay a lot of money in order to get another record into their collection, the sound quality of which will never cease to please!
While many users have already thrown their records into the trash and their players have been shoved into the closet, they are still alive and developing. Although the number of stores selling gramophone records has noticeably decreased even here in Russia (while CDs can be found in almost every shop selling industrial goods), the world's leading companies continue to produce and improve vinyl disc players - gramophone records.
To obtain records with stereophonic information, two channels of it are recorded on two sides of a V-shaped groove. The highest chic is considered to be direct recording at the beginning of the creation of the original, without the use of auxiliary studio tape recorders. Alas, such records are very rare.
To play records, a double pickup with one needle is used - the components of its vibrations from the two inclined walls of the groove are mechanically transmitted to two systems for converting mechanical vibrations into electrical ones. The needle has a U-shaped end with a small radius of curvature and is located inside the V-shaped groove of the record without touching its bottom. Therefore, only changes in the groove profile are transmitted to the needle. The needle is made of a hard, low-wear material - usually corundum or diamond. In more or less high-quality players, only diamond needles are used with a service life of up to 500-1000 hours.
The reasons for the long life of gramophone records are not only that many music lovers and simply music lovers have accumulated entire collections of these products, many find that the sound of the record being played is softer, more natural and warmer than that of digital systems. And one cannot but agree with this. Even the inherent noise of records has become so commonplace that designers of CD players are forced to create a faint noise during pauses.
A gramophone record (usually just a record) is an analogue carrier of sound information - a disk, on one or both sides of which a continuous spiral groove (track) is applied by one method or another, the shape of which is modulated by a sound wave.
To “play” (reproduce sound) gramophone records, devices specially designed for this purpose are used: gramophones, gramophones, and later on – electric players and electrophones.
When moving along a record track, the player's needle begins to vibrate (since the shape of the track is uneven in the plane of the record along its radius and perpendicular to the direction of movement of the needle, and depends on the recorded signal). When vibrated, the piezoelectric material or electromagnetic coil of the pickup produces an electrical signal, which is amplified by the amplifier and then played back by the speaker(s), reproducing the sound recorded in the recording studio.
The words "record" and "record" are shorthand for "gramophone record" and "gramophone record", although gramophones themselves have not been widely used for a long time. At the end of the 19th and throughout the 20th centuries, the gramophone record was (before it was replaced by the compact disc in the mid-1990s) the most popular means of distributing audio recordings, inexpensive and accessible.
The main advantage of the gramophone record was the convenience of mass replication by hot pressing; in addition, gramophone records are not subject to the action of electric and magnetic fields. The disadvantages of a gramophone record are susceptibility to temperature changes and humidity, mechanical damage (scratches), as well as inevitable wear and tear with constant use (decrease and loss of audio characteristics). In addition, phonograph records provide less dynamic range than more modern recording storage formats.
Hard plates Various sizes of gramophone records: 30 cm (45 rpm), 25 cm (78 rpm) and 17.5 cm (45 rpm). The central “apple” of the latter can be broken off to obtain a hole with a diameter of 38.24 mm for automatic record players. The term “hard” itself in relation to gramophone records is rarely used, because usually gramophone records, unless specified, mean just that. Early gramophone records are most often called “shellac” (based on the material they are made of), or “gramophone” (based on the common device for playing them). Shellac plates are thick (up to 3 mm), heavy (up to 220 g) and fragile. Before playing such records on relatively modern electrophones, you need to make sure that their tonearm is equipped with a replaceable head or a rotary stylus marked “78”, and that the player’s disk can rotate at the appropriate speed. Gramophone records are not necessarily made of shellac - as technology developed, they began to be made of synthetic resins and plastics. In the USSR in 1950, 78 rpm records made of polyvinyl chloride appeared; they were marked “PVC” and “Shellac-free”. The last “breakable” shellac record was released at the Aprelevsky plant in 1971.
But usually vinyl records mean later ones, designed for playback on electric players, not mechanical gramophones, and at a rotation speed of no higher than 45 rpm.
Flexible plates There are rare supplement records that were included in computer magazines in the late 1970s and on which computer programs were recorded (later, before the widespread distribution of floppy disks, compact cassettes were used for these purposes). This standard of records was called Floppy-ROM; such a flexible record could hold up to 4 KB of data at a rotation speed of 33⅓ rpm. Flexible records are also recorded on old x-rays.
Flexible postcard plates were also previously produced. Such souvenirs were sent by mail and contained, in addition to notes, handwritten congratulations. They came in two different types:
Consisting of a flexible rectangular or round plate with one-sided recording, attached to a printing base card with a hole in the center. Like flexible records, they had a limited operating frequency range and playing time;
The tracks of the record were printed on a varnish layer covering a photograph or postcard. The sound quality was even lower than on flexible gramophone records (and postcards based on them); such records could not be stored for a long time due to warping and drying out of the varnish. But such records could be recorded by the sender himself: there were recorders, one of which can be seen in action in the film “Carnival Night.”
Souvenir and decorative plates“Sound souvenir” - a photo card with a recording. They were made in the presence of the customer in small semi-makeshift recording studios in resort towns of the USSR. The usual color of gramophone records is black, but multi-colored ones are also available. There are also gramophone records where, under a transparent layer with tracks, there is a paint layer that repeats the design of the envelope or replaces the information on it (as a rule, these are expensive collector's editions). Decorative plates can be square, hexagonal, in the form of a circular saw blade, in the shape of animals, birds, etc.
Handicraft records. "Music on the ribs" Recording on X-ray film
In the 1950s and 1960s in the USSR, underground recording studios recorded musical works, which for ideological reasons were prohibited from being distributed by the Melodiya company, on large-format X-ray films. This is where the expression “Jazz on the bones” came from (also, such “homemade” recordings were commonly called “ribs” or “records on ribs”). In those years, recordings of many Western singers and musical groups (for example, The Beatles) could only be heard on such underground records. Due to the drying of the film emulsion, such plates curled over time and were generally short-lived.
This original method of sound recording is reflected in art, for example, in Viktor Tsoi’s song “Once You Were a Beatnik” there are the words: “You were ready to give your soul for rock and roll, extracted from a photograph of someone else’s diaphragm.” Also in the song “My Old Blues” by the leader of the Moscow acoustic group “Bedlam” (late 1990s - 2002) Viktor Klyuev there are the words: “The record ‘on the bones’ is still intact, but you can’t understand individual phrases anymore.” The process of recording “on the bones” itself was demonstrated in the 2008 film “Hipsters” (original title: “Boogie on the Bones”). As soon as affordable tape recorders became available for sale, homemade recording practically disappeared.
Recording formats
Monophonic records Historically, records with monophonic recording (one sound channel) were the first to appear. The vast majority of these records had a transverse, or Berliner, recording, in which the pickup needle oscillates left and right. However, at the dawn of the recording era, records were also released with deep (“Edisonian”) recording, where the needle moved up and down. Some gramophones had the ability to rotate the head with a membrane by 90°, which allowed them to play both types of records. The first mass-produced monophonic records had a rotation speed of 78 rpm, then records appeared at speeds of 45 and 33⅓ rpm (for music) and 16⅔ and 8½ rpm (for speech). Monophonic records produced in the USSR were marked with a triangle or square sign. On early records and turntables, the rotation speed was written inside a geometric figure. Sometimes only the rotation speed was indicated, without markings.
Stereo records In monophonic records, the profiles of the left and right walls of the V-shaped sound track do not differ, but in stereophonic records (two sound channels, for the right and left ears), the right wall of the track is modulated by the signal of the first channel, and the left wall by the signal of the second channel. The stereophonic pickup head has two sensitive elements (piezocrystals or electromagnetic coils), located at an angle of 45° to the surface of the record (and at 90° to each other) and connected to the stylus by so-called pushers. Mechanical vibrations that the stylus perceives from the left or right wall of the audio track excite an electrical signal in the corresponding sound channel of the player. This scheme was theoretically substantiated by the English engineer Alan Blumlein back in 1931, but it received practical implementation only in 1958. It was then that the first modern stereo records were first demonstrated at the London Recording Equipment Exhibition.
Stereo players can also play monophonic recordings, in which case they perceive them as two identical channels.
In early experiments on recording a stereo signal onto one track, they tried to combine more traditional transverse and depth recording: one channel was formed based on horizontal vibrations of the stylus, and the other based on vertical vibrations. But with this recording format, the quality of one channel was significantly inferior to the quality of the other, and it was quickly abandoned.
Most stereo records are recorded at 33⅓ rpm with a track width of 55 µm. Previously (especially in a number of countries outside the USSR), records with a rotation speed of 45 rpm were widely produced. In the USA, their compact versions were especially popular, intended for use in jukeboxes with automatic change or selection of records. They were also suitable for playback on home players. To record speech programs, records were produced with a rotation speed of 8⅓ rpm and a playing time of up to one and a half hours on one side. Stereo records are available in three diameters: 175, 250 and 300 mm, which provides an average duration of sound on one side (at 33⅓ rpm) of 7-8, 13-15 and 20-24 minutes. The duration of the sound depends on the cutting density. A tightly cut record can hold up to 30 minutes of music on one side, but the stylus on such records can jump and be generally unstable. Also, records with compacted recording wear out faster due to narrower groove walls.
Quadrophonic records Quadraphonic records contain information about four (two front and two rear) audio channels, which allows you to convey the volume of a musical work. This format gained some, rather limited, distribution in the 1970s. The number of albums released in this format was very small (for example, a quad version of the famous 1973 album by the rock group Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon” was released), and their circulation was limited - this was due to the need to use rare and expensive special players and amplifiers for 4 channels. By the 1980s, this direction was curtailed. In the USSR, the first and only experiment in mastering four-channel sound took place in 1980, when an album by the group “Yabloko” was recorded and released under the name “Country-folk-rock group “Yabloko”” (KA90-14435-6). The record cost more than a regular one - 6 rubles (a giant stereo record with pop music then cost 2 rubles 15 kopecks, released under a foreign license - slightly more expensive), and the total circulation was 18,000 copies.
Manufacturing Using special equipment, sound is converted into mechanical vibrations of a cutter (usually sapphire), which cuts concentric sound tracks onto a layer of material. At the dawn of recording, tracks were cut on wax, later on phonographic foil coated with nitrocellulose, and later phonographic foil was replaced by copper foil. In the late 70s, Teldec developed DMM (Direct Metal Mastering) technology, according to which tracks are formed on a thin layer of amorphous copper covering a perfectly flat steel substrate. This made it possible to significantly increase the accuracy of reproduction of the recorded signal, which led to a noticeable improvement in the sound quality of phonographic recordings. This technology is still used today. From the disk obtained in this way, using electroplating, the required number of nickel copies with both positive and negative display of the mechanical phonogram is obtained in several successive stages. The negative copies made at the last stage, which serve as the basis for the process of pressing vinyl records, are called matrices; All intermediate nickel copies are usually called originals.
The production of originals and matrices is carried out in the galvanic workshop. Electrochemical processes are carried out in multi-chamber galvanic installations with automatic stepwise regulation of electric current and nickel build-up time.
Mold parts are manufactured on CNC machines and undergo high-temperature soldering in vacuum ovens using special technology. The molds themselves ensure high uniformity of the temperature field on the forming surfaces, low inertia of the temperature regime, and therefore high productivity. A single mold can produce tens of thousands of records. The material for making a modern gramophone record is a special mixture based on a copolymer of vinyl chloride and vinyl acetate (polyvinyl chloride) with various additives necessary to give the plastic the necessary mechanical and temperature properties. High quality mixing of powdery components is achieved using two-stage mixers with hot and cold mixing.
In the press shop, a heated portion of vinyl with labels already glued on top and bottom is fed into the press, which, under pressure of up to 100 atm, spreads between the two halves of the mold and, after cooling, forms a finished gramophone record. Next, the disc edges are trimmed, inspected, and packaged. The first gramophone record produced after installing nickel dies on the press, and then each specially selected one from the circulation, are carefully checked for dimensional characteristics and listened to in specially equipped sound booths. To avoid warping, all pressed records undergo the required temperature exposure, and before packing in an envelope, the appearance of each record is checked additionally.
Playback Playing vinyl records has a number of features related both to the physical nature of this medium and to the technical features of vinyl sound reproduction and its amplification. For example, a mandatory element for electrophones with a magnetic pickup head is a phono stage.
Story The most primitive prototype of a gramophone record can be considered a music box, in which a metal disk with a deep spiral groove is used to pre-record a melody. In certain places of the groove, pinpoint depressions are made - pits, the location of which corresponds to the melody. When the disk rotates, driven by a clock spring mechanism, a special metal needle slides along the groove and “reads” the sequence of applied dots. The needle is attached to a membrane, which makes a sound every time the needle hits a groove.
The oldest gramophone record in the world is now considered to be a sound recording that was made in 1860. Researchers from the recording history group First Sounds discovered it on March 1, 2008, in a Paris archive and were able to play an audio recording of a folk song made by French inventor Edouard Leon Scott de Martinville using a device he called a “phonautograph” in 1860. It is 10 seconds long and is an excerpt from a French folk song. The phonautograph scratched sound tracks on a piece of paper blackened by smoke from an oil lamp.
In 1877, the French scientist Charles Cros was the first to scientifically substantiate the principles of recording sound on a drum (or disk) and its subsequent playback. In the same year, namely in the middle of 1877, the young American inventor Thomas Edison invented and patented a phonograph device in which sound is recorded on a cylindrical roller wrapped in tin foil (or paper tape coated with a layer of wax) using a needle (cutter) , associated with the membrane; the needle draws a helical groove of variable depth on the surface of the foil. His wax roller phonograph was not widely used due to the difficulty of copying the recording, the rapid wear of the rollers, and poor playback quality.
In 1887, the Jewish-American engineer Emil Berliner proposed using a disk-shaped medium for recording. While working on his idea, Berliner first built and tested Charles Cros' device, proposed 20 years earlier, using a zinc plate instead of a chrome plate. Emil Berliner replaced the rollers with disks - metal matrices from which copies could be made. With their help, gramophone records were pressed. One matrix made it possible to print an entire circulation - at least 500 records, which significantly reduced production costs and, accordingly, the cost of production. This was the main advantage of Emil Berliner's gramophone records compared to Edison's wax rollers, which could not be mass-produced. Unlike Edison's phonograph, Berliner developed a special device to record sound - a recorder, and to reproduce sound he created another - a gramophone, for which a patent was received on September 26, 1887. Instead of Edison's depth recording, Berliner used transverse recording, in which the needle left a sinuous trace of constant depth. In the 20th century, the membrane was replaced by microphones that convert sound vibrations into electrical vibrations, and by electronic amplifiers.
In 1892, a method was developed for galvanic replication of a zinc disk from a positive, as well as a technology for pressing ebonite records using a steel printing matrix. But ebonite was quite expensive and was soon replaced by a composite mass based on shellac, a wax-like substance produced by tropical insects from the family of lac bugs that live in southeast Asia. The plates became of better quality and cheaper, and therefore more accessible, but their main drawback was their low mechanical strength - they resembled glass in their fragility. Shellac records were produced until the middle of the 20th century, until they were supplanted by even cheaper ones - made from polyvinyl chloride (“vinyl”). One of the first real gramophone records was a record released in 1897 by Victor in the USA.
Record(from gramophone record, more often just plate) - an analogue audio information carrier - a disk, on one or both sides of which there is a continuous spiral groove (track), the shape of which is modulated by a sound wave. For a long time (from about the end of the 19th to the end of the 20th century) it was the most popular medium for musical recordings, inexpensive, suitable for mass replication, providing high-quality sound recordings and suitable for playback on relatively simple and cheap equipment.
To “play” (reproduce sound) gramophone records, devices specially designed for this purpose are used: gramophones, gramophones, and hereinafter referred to as electric players and electrophones.
The main advantage of the gramophone record was the convenience of mass reproduction by hot pressing; in addition, gramophone records are not subject to the action of electric and magnetic fields. The disadvantages of a gramophone record are susceptibility to temperature changes and humidity, mechanical damage (scratches), as well as inevitable wear and tear with constant use (decrease and loss of audio characteristics). In addition, phonograph records provide less dynamic range than more modern recording storage formats.
Types of records
Hard plates
The term “hard” in itself in relation to gramophone records is rarely used, because usually gramophone records, unless specified, mean just that. Early gramophone records are most often called “shellac” (based on the material they are made of), or “gramophone” (based on the common device for playing them). Shellac plates are thick (up to 3 mm), heavy (up to 220 g) and fragile. Before playing such records on relatively modern electrophones, you need to make sure that their tonearm is equipped with a replaceable head or a rotary stylus marked “78”, and that the player’s disk can rotate at the appropriate speed.
Gramophone records are not necessarily made of shellac - as technology developed, they began to be made of synthetic resins and plastics. In the USSR in 1950, 78 rpm records made of polyvinyl chloride appeared; they were marked “PVC” and “Shellac-free”. The last “breakable” shellac record was released at the Aprelevsky plant in 1971.
But usually vinyl records mean later ones, designed for playback on electric players, not mechanical gramophones, and at a rotation speed of 33⅓ rpm or (less often) 45 rpm.
Flexible plates
There are rare supplementary records that were included in computer magazines in the late 1970s and on which computer programs were recorded (later, before the mass distribution of floppy disks, compact cassettes were used for these purposes). This record standard was called Floppy-ROM; such a flexible record could hold up to 4 KB of data at a rotation speed of 33⅓ rpm.
Flexible records on which pop music was recorded were widespread in the USSR. They were small in size and usually held only 4 songs - 2 on each side.
Flexible records are also recorded on old x-rays (“music on the ribs”).
Flexible postcard records were also previously produced. Such souvenirs were sent by mail and contained, in addition to notes, handwritten congratulations. They came in two different types:
- Consisting of a flexible rectangular or round plate with one-sided recording, attached to a printing base card with a hole in the center. Like flexible records, they had a limited operating frequency range and playing time;
- The tracks of the record were printed on a varnish layer covering a photograph or postcard. The sound quality was even lower than on flexible gramophone records (and postcards based on them); such records could not be stored for a long time due to warping and drying out of the varnish. But such records could be recorded by the sender himself: there were recorders, one of which can be seen in action in the film “Carnival Night”.
Souvenir and decorative plates
The usual color of gramophone records is black, but multi-colored ones are also available. There are also gramophone records where, under a transparent layer with tracks, there is a paint layer that repeats the design of the envelope or replaces the information on it (as a rule, these are expensive collector's editions). Decorative plates can be square, hexagonal, in the form of a circular saw blade, in the shape of animals, birds, etc.
Handicraft records. "Music on the ribs"
Stereo players can also play monophonic recordings, in which case they perceive them as two identical channels.
In early experiments in recording a stereo signal onto one track, they tried to combine more traditional transverse and depth recording: one channel was formed based on horizontal vibrations of the stylus, and the other based on vertical vibrations. But with this recording format, the quality of one channel was significantly inferior to the quality of the other, and it was quickly abandoned. However, the problem of vertical vibrations remains, although it has become much less noticeable, since it corresponds only to the difference between the channels, which is why the sound engineer is recommended to reduce this difference as much as possible when recording.
Most stereo records are recorded at 33⅓ rpm with a track width of 55 µm. Previously (especially in a number of countries outside the USSR), records with a rotation speed of 45 rpm were widely produced. In the USA, their compact versions were especially popular, intended for use in jukeboxes with automatic change or selection of records. They were also suitable for playback on home players. To record speech programs, records were produced with a rotation speed of 8⅓ rpm and a playing time of up to one and a half hours on one side. Such records were not found on the territory of the USSR, nor, indeed, were jukeboxes
Stereo records are available in three diameters: 175, 250 and 300 mm, which provides an average duration of sound on one side (at 33⅓ rpm) of 7-8, 13-15 and 20-24 minutes. The duration of the sound depends on the cutting density. A tightly cut record can hold up to 30 minutes of music on one side, but the stylus on such records can jump and be generally unstable. Also, records with compacted recording wear out faster due to narrower groove walls.
Quadrophonic records
Quadraphonic records record information on four (two front and two rear) audio channels, which allows you to convey the volume of a musical work. This format gained some, rather limited, distribution in the 1970s. The number of albums released in this format was very small (for example, a quad version of the famous rock group Pink Floyd album “Dark Side of the Moon” from 1973 was released), and their circulation was limited - this was due to the need for use for their reproduction. rare and expensive special players and amplifiers for 4 channels. By the 1980s, this direction was curtailed.
Manufacturing
Using special equipment, sound is converted into mechanical vibrations of a cutter (most often sapphire), which cuts concentric sound tracks onto a layer of material. At the dawn of recording, tracks were cut on wax, later on phonographic foil coated with nitrocellulose, and later phonographic foil was replaced by copper foil. In the late 70s, Teldec developed DMM (Direct Metal Mastering) technology, according to which tracks are formed on a thin layer of amorphous copper covering a perfectly flat steel substrate. This made it possible to significantly increase the accuracy of reproduction of the recorded signal, which led to a noticeable improvement in the sound quality of phonographic recordings. This technology is still used today.
From the disk obtained in this way, using electroplating, the required number of nickel copies with both positive and negative display of the mechanical phonogram is obtained in several successive stages. The negative copies made at the last stage, which serve as the basis for the process of pressing vinyl records, are called matrices; All intermediate nickel copies are usually called originals.
The production of originals and matrices is carried out in the galvanic workshop. Electrochemical processes are carried out in multi-chamber galvanic installations with automatic stepwise regulation of electric current and nickel build-up time.
Mold parts are manufactured on CNC machines and undergo high-temperature soldering in vacuum ovens using special technology. The molds themselves ensure high uniformity of the temperature field on the forming surfaces, low inertia of the temperature regime, and therefore high productivity. A single mold can produce tens of thousands of records.
The material for making a modern gramophone record is a special mixture based on a copolymer of vinyl chloride and vinyl acetate (polyvinyl chloride) with various additives necessary to give the plastic the necessary mechanical and temperature properties. High quality mixing of powdery components is achieved using two-stage mixers with hot and cold mixing.
Story
The most primitive prototype of a gramophone record can be considered a music box, in which a metal disk with a deep spiral groove is used to pre-record a melody. In certain places of the groove, pinpoint depressions are made - pits, the location of which corresponds to the melody. When the disk rotates, driven by a clock spring mechanism, a special metal needle slides along the groove and “reads” the sequence of applied dots. The needle is attached to a membrane, which makes a sound every time the needle hits a groove.
The oldest gramophone record in the world is now considered to be a sound recording that was made in 1860. Researchers from the recording history group First Sounds discovered it on March 1, 2008 in a Paris archive and were able to play an audio recording of a folk song made by the French inventor Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville using a device he called a “phonautograph” in 1860. It is 10 seconds long and is an excerpt from a French folk song. The phonautograph scratched sound tracks onto a piece of paper blackened by smoke from an oil lamp.
In 1877, the French scientist Charles Cros was the first to scientifically substantiate the principles of recording sound on a drum (or disk) and its subsequent playback. In the same year, namely in the middle of 1877, the young American inventor Thomas Edison invented and patented a device called the phonograph, in which sound is recorded on a cylindrical roller wrapped in tin foil (or paper tape coated with a layer of wax) using a needle (cutter) , associated with the membrane; the needle draws a helical groove of variable depth on the surface of the foil. His wax roller phonograph was not widely used due to the difficulty of copying the recording, the rapid wear of the rollers, and poor playback quality.
In 1892, a method was developed for galvanic replication of a zinc disk from a positive, as well as a technology for pressing ebonite records using a steel printing matrix. But ebonite was quite expensive and was soon replaced by a composite mass based on shellac, a wax-like substance produced by tropical insects from the family of lac bugs that live in southeast Asia. The plates became of better quality and cheaper, and therefore more accessible, but their main drawback was their low mechanical strength - they resembled glass in their fragility. Shellac records were produced until the middle of the 20th century, until they were supplanted by even cheaper ones - made from polyvinyl chloride (“vinyl”).
One of the first real gramophone records was a record released in 1897 by Victor in the USA.
First revolution
The first mass-produced records had a diameter of 6.89 inches (175 mm) and were called 7-inch records. This oldest standard dates back to the early 1890s. Such gramophone records are designated as “7″”, where “″” is the inch sign. At the beginning of their evolution, gramophone records had a high rotation speed and a large track width, which significantly reduced the duration of the sound - only 2 minutes on one side.
Double-sided gramophone records became available in 1903, thanks to the developments of the Odeon company. In the same year, the first 12-inch (12″) gramophone records with an actual diameter of 11.89″ (300 mm) appeared. Until the early 1910s, they released mainly excerpts from the works of musical classics, since they contained a total of up to five minutes of sound.
The third, most popular, size was 10 inches (10"), or 250 mm. Such records could hold one and a half times more material than a standard 7-inch record.
The three main record sizes - 12″, 10″ and 7″ - are traditionally called “giant”, “grand” and “minion”, respectively.
The “life” of the first records was short-lived - the pickup weighed more than 100 grams and quickly wore out the track. The steel needles had to be changed after each play of a side, which was sometimes neglected, and if already played needles were used, the record would deteriorate even faster. Sometimes, in order to extend the life of favorite works, the same track was recorded on both sides of some records.
In the 1930s, records were released with one track on one side, and often a single concert by one artist was sold as a set of multiple records, usually in cardboard or, less commonly, leather boxes. Due to the external similarity of such boxes with photo albums, they began to be called record albums (“albums with records”).
Second revolution
With the advent of long-playing gramophone records with a rotation speed of 45 and 33⅓ rpm, the circulation of conventional gramophone records (78 rpm) began to decrease, and at the end of the 1960s their production was finally curtailed (in the USSR, the last gramophone record was released in 1971).
In certain areas, vinyl long-playing stereophonic records with a diameter of 30 cm (eng. LP) are still used:
- for DJ work and sound experiments;
- fans of this type of sound recording (including audiophiles);
- antique lovers and collectors.
On modern records intended for DJs, about 12 minutes of music are “cut” on one side - in this case, the distance between the grooves is much larger, the record is more wear-resistant, and is not afraid of scratches and careless handling.
Growth of record production at the beginning of the 21st century
The development of the industry received an unexpected continuation at the beginning of the 21st century. According to the RIAA, vinyl sales are again showing fairly steady growth after declining in 2005.
Since 2006, sales of vinyl records have been growing every year: for example, in 2007, sales growth was 37%, and this is against the backdrop of a 20% decline in CD sales in the same year. One of the largest American research companies, Nielsen SoundScan, estimates that 2 million vinyl records were sold in the United States alone in 2009; in 2012, 4.6 million records were already sold there, which is 17.7% more than in 2011.
In 2013, sales in the United States amounted to 6.1 million records. In addition to the US, the effect was noticeable in the UK and Australia. In 2016, more than 3.2 million records were sold in the UK (in 2007, when vinyl was the least popular, just over 200,000 records were sold in the country). Records still make up a small portion of the recorded music market (2% in the US in 2013 vs. 57% for CDs).
Both nostalgia plays a role in record sales (in 2010 the Beatles' album Abbey Road was the top seller) and obscure other factors: the first two places in 2013 were taken by the new albums Random Access Memories (Daft Punk) and Modern Vampires of the City (Vampire Weekend). Theories for the new popularity of records include both a desire to hear a richer and warmer sound, and a conscious rejection of the digital world.
In addition, an important role in the “vinyl renaissance” is played by the urban legend that modern cheap CD players do not reproduce sound well. In fact, the 16-bit quantization used in CDs is vastly superior to LP quality (equivalent to about 11 bits for the highest quality pressing).
The gramophone record as an element of culture
Bartmansky and Woodward attribute the continuing appeal of phonograph records to non-technical reasons:
- variability of meaning, allowing different groups of listeners to put their own associations into records;
- sense of continuity, authenticity and “coolness” (English) Russian" Thus, since a large number of audiophile-relevant albums were originally released on LP, listening to them in this form creates a sense of ownership;
- imperfection and non-mass character arising from the processes of production and storage of gramophone records. The fragility of phonograph records becomes their advantage when interpreted as a purely human weakness, in contrast to impersonal digital recordings that can be copied or deleted with the press of a few keys;
- mechanical limitations of turntables that encourage group and ritualistic listening.
Record market
There are two main markets for gramophone records: primary and secondary.
At the beginning of the 21st century primary In the market, the main buyers are DJs and audiophiles who prefer music on analogue media. It is the pace of development of this segment that record companies are most interested in; its statistics are presented above.
Expensive collectible records are produced on so-called “heavy” vinyl, such a record is really heavy and weighs 180 grams, such records provide a greater dynamic range. The quality of stamping and the material itself of such records is higher than that of ordinary vinyl.
Secondary The market is a trade in used vinyl. This segment trades collectibles and private vinyl collections. Currently, the cost of particularly rare records can exceed several thousand dollars.
First press releases of records traditionally receive special attention from collectors (for their considered best sound), as well as limited edition records and various collector's editions.
The main places of trade are online auctions, as well as local stores of used music goods.
Since now a significant part of trade is conducted via the Internet, and the buyer cannot directly evaluate the quality of the product offered (on which both the sound quality and its price greatly depend), sellers and buyers use several different systems for evaluating vinyl records.
Buying a vinyl record player in the 21st century can indicate one thing: either you are a connoisseur of antiques, or a true audiophile.
The peak of vinyl's popularity occurred in the middle of the last century. The record has long remained one of the most popular media of music. A beautiful insert album with the image of the artist, a neat transparent bag that protects the surface of the record from scratches, deteriorating needles, the eternal problem - fuses and the indescribable sound of a warm, gentle crackling in the speakers... Few could have predicted that the advent of magnetic tape drives and the digital era of sound recording (read the article:) will never be able to break the listeners’ love for vinyl sound.
Where it all started
The principle of sound recording, which will become the standard for creating vinyl records for many years, was discovered back in 1857 Edward Leon Scott de Martinville. The phonautograph device, patented in France, proposed recording a sound wave on a glass roller covered with soot or paper. The sound itself was captured through a large horn, at the end of which a needle was installed.
Twenty years later, another significant development will appear on the path to improving the sound recording system. While serving at the telegraph office, inventor and scientist Thomas Edison noticed a certain pattern while observing the operation of punched cards. Each contact that touched the holes on the card produced sounds of different pitches. A few months later, in 1877, a description of a device appeared in the US Patent Office, which would become the real progenitor of vinyl record players.
Principle of operation Edison's phonograph consisted of playing sound from small tin or wooden rollers covered with foil or a sheet of paper soaked in wax. The production of such rollers required a lot of effort, and the sound carriers themselves were not ready for even minimal deformation and were too sensitive to the storage environment.
The search for a simpler device for recording sound and the development of a medium capable of withstanding transportation and more severe operating conditions prompted the American inventor Emil Berliner refuse to use the method proposed by Martinville and then modified by Edison. In 1897, Berliner became the author of patents for two devices: recorder and gramophone.
For the first time, as a medium on which sound recording was carried out, it was used flat zinc disc. This solution made it possible to significantly reduce the cost of the entire record production cycle. Using a recorder, a “sound image” was applied to the surface of the zinc disk, and the resulting print was already used as a mold for creating copies.
The engineers of that time faced a difficult task - to find material suitable for duplicating sound recordings. Among the main requirements for the composition are low cost and wear resistance.
In search of the perfect material
To make the first gramophone records, a dark brown vulcanized rubber called ebonite. This material vaguely resembles plastic and lends itself well to processing, which was especially noteworthy when creating duplicates. Alas, the material has not stood the test of time due to its tendency to oxidize when exposed to daylight and ebonite is being replaced by organic material - shellac.
For the next thirty years, record production technology remains unchanged. Thick and weighty “shellac” records are gradually taking root in the homes of beginning music lovers. Gramophone, and its successor, published in 1907, mechanical gramophone, become not only regulars at clubs, restaurants and educational institutions, but also confidently enter the life of the average consumer.
In large cities, stores began to appear offering a wide range of “music albums” (all records were presented in a cardboard book box resembling a photo album). Alas, the imperfection of recording technology and the specifics of the material used for production made it possible to store only one composition on one side of the record. Due to the short life of the record and its high level of depreciation during playback, the same song was recorded on both sides.
The one-song barrier was only broken in 1931, when pioneers of sound engineering discovered single-groove stereo recording technology. The stereo record began to hold up to six songs of average length. Nevertheless, the life cycle of a shellac record was only a few months of active use. In the mid-thirties, a new competitor appeared for the record - magnetic tape. Chemical technologists entered the fight for a potential buyer, and in 1948 the first batch rolled off the assembly line of the Columbia plant. vinyl records.
Since 1950, vinyl records have also been produced in the USSR. Polyvinyl chloride was distinguished by a high level of wear resistance, and the production process itself made it possible to significantly reduce the final thickness of the plate from 3 to 1.5 millimeters. The principle of recording records, established at the end of the last century, turned out to be simple for “folk craftsmen” to master. In the mid-50s and 60s, entire handicraft factories appeared for the underground production of records.
As a material for making the desired disc with “inhumane songs” banned by the authorities, it was used x-ray film. In the private collections of vinyl fans you can find albums by The Beatles and jazz compositions recorded “on bones” - developed X-ray films.
Battle of “formats”
The entire evolution of gramophone records is shrouded in disagreements in the world of standards: sizes, recording principles, manufacturing materials, recording speed.
Size. In the late 1890s, there was a single approved standard - the 7-inch high-speed record. In 1903, a new standard came into use - “giant” with a diameter of 12 inches. A few years later, another option appeared - 10-inch records. In the CIS market, the generally accepted sizes are plates with a diameter of 175, 250 and 300 mm.
Recording technology. Until 1920, the only method of sound recording remained mechanical. The frequency range for such recording was a meager 150 – 4000 Hz. In 1920, the era of electroacoustic recording began, and a microphone was used as a sound pickup. It is this year that the era of gramophone records receives a new “sound breath” with the ability to reproduce BH from 15 to 10,000 Hz.
Limit capacity. Rotational speed. Another characteristic of the entire recording era that experienced constant change was the speed of rotation of the record. The generally accepted “Soviet standard” of 78 rpm allowed for up to 12 minutes of sound. To record a conversation for a long time, “slow records” were used with a rotation speed of 8 and 1/3 revolutions per minute. Another standard is 45 rpm. The final point in the battle of speeds was the release of 33 1/3 rpm long-playing records.
Mono-stereo-quad. The principle of playing gramophone records is based on “reading” with a needle the sound pattern located in multiple grooves (tracks) of the record. Until 1958, mono records were produced: the stylus read only vertical vibrations. Then stereo plates appear: the vertical is responsible for the left channel, and the roughness placed horizontally is for the right. There were also options for quadraphonic sound, but the technology never justified itself.
Vinyl today
Since the advent of Edison's phonograph until today, the principle of recording records has remained virtually unchanged. Using a recorder, sound vibrations are converted into mechanical vibrations that are fed to a cutter, which applies the image of the composition to a copper-plated steel disk. The resulting template is transferred to nickel copies and only then does the pressing of vinyl records begin.
The principle of operation of playback devices - players from a mechanical point of view has also remained virtually unchanged. The same rotating disk, the same pickup needles.
The cost of modern “vinyls” directly depends on several factors:
- design;
- installed preamplifier;
- form factor.
The advent of the compact disc in 1980 seriously undermined the demand for vinyl. For more than 20 years, records disappeared from the attention of music lovers, and bulky players gave way to compact CD players. But history confidently adheres to the boomerang principle: since 2005, there has been an era of vinyl revival. Vinyl has become a subject of experimentation and a sought-after medium among DJs. Warm, smooth sound with virtually no harmonic distortion and incredible detail is not only the sound that a sophisticated music lover or audiophile deserves. This is a sound that everyone should hear and this opportunity does not require a significant financial investment.
What to choose?
A true audiophile is no stranger to the world of vinyl sound. In his mind, the horizon of “sane” record players starts at a price point of several thousand dollars. However, the choice of such expensive equipment is more like a ritual and a kind of tribute to sound, but you can join the world of records with a much smaller amount.
Japanese company Audio-Technica in the audio equipment market can rightfully have the status of a veteran. It was vinyl record players that became a fateful product in the life of the brand. In 1962, Audio-Technica introduced two high-quality pickups (popularly referred to as "stylus") AT-1 And AT-3. The stunning success of the firstborn was supported by the model AT-5, and 7 years after its founding, the Japanese company enters the world market.
Audio-Technica's influence on the world of turntables cannot be overstated. The company was the first to manufacture ultra-pure monocrystalline copper PCOCC pickups; behind her shoulders are the legendary portable vinyl players Mister Disc And Sound Burger, and three years ago the Japanese announced a specialized “turntable” player AT-LP1240 equipped with a DJ module.
One of the most popular “workhorses” that can serve a person just getting acquainted with the world of records can be an entry-level player from the company Audio-Technica AT-LP60 USB.
If your evolution as a music lover began with MP3 and OGG, smoothly transposed into listening to FLAC and ALAC formats, and your old CD player was no longer enjoyable, the Audio-Technica AT-LP60 USB can introduce you to what vinyl sounds like. This player will be an ideal choice for a beginning listener.
