Making a vinyl record. History of vinyl

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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 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 its susceptibility to temperature changes and humidity, mechanical damage(appearance of scratches), as well as inevitable wear and tear due to constant use (decrease and loss of audio performance). 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 transparent layer with the 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.

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, intended for use in jukeboxes with automatic change or the choice of record. 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 step control electric current and nickel buildup 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 for pre-registration The melody uses a metal disc on which a deep spiral groove is applied. 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 Bad quality playback

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 high speed rotation and a larger 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” onto 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, US sales totaled 6.1 million records. In addition to the US, the effect was noticeable in the UK and Australia. 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 best sounding), 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.

Gramophone record(jarg: vinyl, or simply record) - an analog storage medium (most often audio) - a disc made of synthetic materials (originally shellac, then vinyl), on one or both sides of which a continuous winding groove is applied by one method or another (track) whose shape (depth and width) is modulated by a sound wave.

For "playing"(extracting sound from) gramophone records, devices specially designed for this purpose are used: gramophones, gramophones, and later electrophones and electric players.

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 of the stylus (or the 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 "gramophone record" and "recording" are abbreviation for "gramophone record" and “gramophone recording,” 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 in the mid-80s by the compact disc) 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 gramophone records are their susceptibility to temperature changes and humidity, as well as the ability of records to wear out (lose their audio characteristics) with constant use.

Types of records

- Shellac(gramophone) records cannot be played on electric phones (except for those equipped with a rotating needle marked “78” on one side), otherwise the needle will immediately become unusable.
- Vinyl(long-playing and stereo) and flexible records are intended only for electrophones. Playing such a record on a gramophone will immediately and forever destroy the record.

Therefore, it is important to distinguish between types of records. Gramophones are thicker, heavier, and more fragile (like glass). Vinyl (or flexible) records produced in the USSR are marked with an inverted triangle (mono) or intersecting circles (stereo). Further in the text, only vinyl and flexible records are considered.

The color of gramophone records is mainly black, although multi-colored ones are often produced for children and DJs. Decorative plates can be square, hexagonal, in the form of a circular saw blade, as well as in the shape of animals and birds.

Formats

Mostly records were produced with a diameter of 30, 25 and 17.5 cm (Soviet designations: “∅300”, “∅250” and “∅175”) (12″, 10″ and 7″). Other sizes are occasionally found - 12, 15, 23, 28, 33 cm (5″, 6″, 8″, 9″, 11″, 13″).

The rotation speed can be 78, 45, 33⅓ and 16⅔ rpm.

Most records are rigid, but there are also flexible ones, often pasted into magazines as sound supplements (for example, supplements to the Soviet magazine Krugozor).
There are rare supplementary records that were included in computer magazines of the 70s and on which computer programs were recorded (later, before the mass distribution of floppy disks, compact cassettes were used for these purposes). This standard of records was called Floppy-ROM and such a flexible record at a rotation speed of 33.3 revolutions per minute could hold up to 4 kB of data.
Flexible records are also recorded on old x-rays (see below).

Also previously released plates-postcards. 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), and such records could not be stored for a long time due to warping and drying out of the varnish. But such records could have been recorded by the sender himself: there were recorders, one of which can be seen in action in the film “Carnival Night.”

The non-standard diameter of the soundtrack on the postcard could lead to false alarm player hitchhiking.

On modern records intended for DJs, about 12 minutes of music are cut onto one side. In this case, the distance between the grooves is much larger, the plate is more wear-resistant, makes less noise over time, and is not afraid of scratches and careless handling. The plate hole diameter is 7 or 24 mm, thickness varies from 1.5 to 3 mm, weight 120-220 g

Stereo records

Monaural records use only horizontal stylus vibrations, while stereo records use both horizontal and vertical stylus vibrations. The sum of two audio channels is encoded horizontally, and their difference is encoded vertically, which ensures full compatibility (monaural players reproduce stereo records as the sum of channels, and stereo players reproduce monophonic recordings as two identical channels).

Most stereo records are recorded at 33 1/3 rpm with a 55 µm audio track width. Previously, records with a rotation speed of 45 rpm were widely produced. They were, in particular, used in jukeboxes with automatic change or selection of records. To record speech programs, records were produced with a rotation speed of 8 1/3 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 33 1/3 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. Such records wear out faster due to the 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 album of the rock group Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon” of 1973 was released), and their circulation was limited - this was due to the need to use rarely used materials for their reproduction. 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 the usual one - 6 rubles, and the total circulation was 18,000 copies.

Records "on the bones"

In the 50s and 60s of the 20th century in the USSR, underground recording studios recorded musical works, which for ideological reasons were forbidden to be distributed by the Melodiya company, on large-format X-ray films. This is where the expression comes from "Jazz on the Bones"(such “homemade” recordings were also popularly 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 semi-legal underground records. Due to the drying of the film emulsion, when aging, such plates curled 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 photo of someone else’s diaphragm.” Also in the song “My old blues” by the leader of the Moscow acoustic group “Bedlam” (late 90s - 2002) Viktor Klyuev contains the words: “The record “on the bones” is still intact, but you can’t understand individual phrases anymore.” The process of recording “on bones” was demonstrated in the film “Hipsters” (original title “Boogie on Bones”) from 2008.

Manufacturing

The sound from a magnetic phonogram, using special equipment, is converted into mechanical vibrations of a sapphire cutter, which cuts concentric sound grooves on a layer of material. At the dawn of recording, phonographic records were cut on wax, later on phonographic foil coated with nitrocellulose, and later phonographic foil was replaced by copper foil. The application of tracks on the thinnest layer of amorphous copper covering a perfectly flat steel substrate 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, developed by Teldec in the late 70s and known as DMM (Direct Metal Mastering), is still used today.

The resulting copper disk is intended to be obtained from it by electroplating in several successive stages of the required number of nickel copies with both positive and negative display of the mechanical phonogram. The negative copies made at the last stage are called matrices, which serve as the basis in the process of pressing gramophone records; all intermediate nickel copies are usually called originals.
The galvanic shop produces originals and matrices. Electrochemical processes are carried out in multi-chamber galvanic installations with automatic stepwise regulation of electric current and nickel build-up time with a special electrolyte composition.
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. Tens of thousands of records can come out of one mold.

The material for making a gramophone record is a special mixture based on a copolymer of vinyl chloride with vinyl acetate (polyvinyl chloride) with various additives 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 dose of vinyl with labels already attached to the top and bottom is fed into the press, which, under pressure of up to 100 atm, spreads between the two halves of the mold, after cooling, forming 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 packaging in an envelope, the appearance of each record is checked.

Sound recording is the process of storing sound vibrations in the range of 20-20,000 Hz on any medium using special devices.

Fortunately, many of us are not deaf and therefore can hear the sound of rain, the grumbling of the neighbor’s granny, the rumble of thunder, and other voices and sounds of the world around us.

All kinds of mechanisms capable of playing music appeared in the Middle Ages. Organ organs, music boxes and even clocks with musical chimes - all these are the first steps. But until the moment when it became possible to record human speech and listen to it, it took a very long time to walk and walk.

Until 1877, when Thomas Edison invented a sound recording machine - the phonograph, which for the first time made it possible to record the sound of the human voice.

The principle of operation of a phonograph

For mechanical recording and playback of sound, Edison used rollers covered with tin foil. Such foils were hollow cylinders with a diameter of about 5 cm and a length of 12 cm.

In the first phonograph, the metal roller was rotated using a crank. It moved axially with each revolution due to the screw thread on the drive shaft. Tin foil (staniol) was placed on the roller. A steel needle connected to a membrane of parchment touched it. A metal cone horn was attached to the membrane. When recording and playing back sound, the roller had to be rotated manually, no faster than one revolution per minute.

When the roller rotated in the absence of sound, the needle extruded a spiral groove of constant depth into the foil. When the membrane vibrated, the needle was pressed into the tin in accordance with the perceived sound, creating a groove of variable depth. This is how the “deep recording” method was invented.

As his first recording experience, Edison sang the first stanza of the children's song "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Everything went well. Edison himself was so amazed by the discovery that he said: " I have never been so stunned in my life. I've always been afraid of things that work the first time".

In 1885, American inventor Charles Tainter (1854-1940) developed the graphophone - a foot-operated phonograph (like a foot-operated sewing machine) - and replaced the tin sheets of the rollers with a wax paste. Edison bought Tainter's patent, and removable wax rollers began to be used for recording instead of foil rollers.

The phonograph existed in almost unchanged form for several decades. It ceased production as a device for recording musical works at the end of the first decade of the 20th century, but was used as a voice recorder for almost 15 years. Rollers for it were produced until 1929.

Disc era

In 1887, on September 26, Emil Berliner received a patent for the invention of the gramophone. The device differed from Edison's phonograph in that the wax rollers were replaced by records. Moreover, copies could be made from them.

The oldest gramophone record in the world is now considered to be a sound recording that was made in 1860. It was discovered on March 1, 2008 in a Paris archive and they even managed to reproduce it. This sound recording folk song made by the French inventor Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville using a device he called a “phonautograph” in 1860.

The recording is only 10 seconds long and is an excerpt from a French folk song. The phonautograph scratched sound tracks on a sheet of paper blackened by smoke from an oil lamp.

Records have gone through several stages of their history. Here are some interesting facts.

The first records had a diameter of 6.89 inches and were called 7-inch (7") or 175 mm records. This is the oldest standard and it appeared at the dawn of the development of sound recording: in the early 1890s. In the first 20 years of their existence, gramophone records had a high rotation speed and the greater thickness of the track. This was reflected in the duration of the sound - only 2 minutes on one side.
In 1903, thanks to the developments of the Odeon company, gramophone records became double-sided. In the same year, records of a different diameter began to appear: the first 11.89 or 12 inch (12″) records with a diameter of 300 mm. Until the early 10s of the 20th century, they released mainly excerpts from the works of musical classics: they contained a total of up to five minutes of sound.
The third, most popular, size was 10 inches (10") or 250 mm. These records contained one and a half times more material than a standard seven-inch record. However, they did not differ in durability and sometimes, in order to extend the life of favorite works, some records recorded the same track on both sides.

The 20s of the last century - the first revolution in the world of recording. It was then that instead of recording through a horn, they began to use the electroacoustic method - recording through a microphone. By reducing distortion, the frequency range has expanded from 150-4000 to 50-10000 Hz.

The next breakthrough was the release of so-called “long-playing” records. This was done in 1948 by Columbia, the largest at that time and one of the oldest recording companies in the United States. Long-playing records were intended for electroacoustic playback using electric players, electrophones, and later more compact radios.

The band of recorded frequencies was once again expanded: from 50 to 16,000 Hz, the sound timbre was completely preserved, and in addition dynamic range recording increased to 50-57 dB, the noise level decreased.

In the USSR, the first long-playing gramophone record was released in 1953. In the same year, long-playing records (33 rpm) with variable recording pitch appeared in the world, which made it possible to increase the recording duration by another 30%. In the USSR, such records began to be produced only in 1956.

Today, electric players are no longer produced, and records are taken out into the street in packs, like unnecessary trash or they simply rent it out to some museum. We can only hope that at least in museums they will be preserved for as long as possible and future generations will be able to get acquainted with this stage in the development of sound recording not only from pictures.

Vinyl records evoke almost the same associations for every person - Soviet-era turntables, dusty paper sleeves with discs lying around on shelves, the warm, rough surface of vinyl, a barely audible characteristic noise in the speakers. Almost all people believe that vinyl is a thing of the past, displaced from the arena of sound evolution by CDs and mp3s. But there is a category of creative people who not only know, but are one hundred percent sure that vinyl is alive and will live for a long time.

The history of vinyl was no less complex than the history of electric light bulbs, which replaced oil and gas lamps. Not everyone perceived vinyl records even at the very dawn of their inception, when there was almost no analogue. Feature long journey vinyl is that the fate of records was inseparable from the progress of development of the devices that played them.

In the 16th century, the first attempts were made to record sound using mechanical instruments - from primitive musical snuffboxes and boxes, alarm clocks to complex stationary grandfather clocks, polyphones, orchestrions, tower chimes and “sounded” carriages. At the same time, musical toys and devices appeared in Russia. But music boxes became especially widespread in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The outstanding American inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) designed a device for mechanical recording and reproduction of sound (phonograph) in 1877. However, the priority of the invention belongs to the French scientist, brilliant musician and poet Ch. Cros.

The sound was recorded on a wax roller with a thin metal needle. Of course, such a recording could not be durable and of high quality. A large number of phonograph designs were developed during these years. They were a huge success.

Our great-grandfathers used phonographs, although improved ones, until the thirties.

The technology for extracting sound from rough vinyl sides is very simple. By her own soundtrack- This is a tightly twisted spiral-groove, with unequal jagged edges that can be easily seen. Based on the size of the groove, it is easy to understand whether the record is old or new and approximately how long it will sound. It's easy to guess why - the smaller the groove, the longer the sound spiral will be placed on the vinyl roundel. Music is cut with a special cutter on a uniform vinyl surface - this cutter fluctuates depending on the sound that is fed to the recording machine. Subsequently, the player's needle will dance along these jagged and uneven tracks, transmitting all these vibrations to the speakers as sound. And no special tricks are required, other than the usual signal amplification.

In 1888, the German E. Berliner invented the gramophone - the miracle of the century, and the era of mass culture began. The world's first gramophone record was made of celluloid and is now kept in the US National Museum in Washington. In 1897 it was replaced by a disk made of shellac, spar and soot.

Strange-looking mosquitoes have been spotted on tropical plants of the mulberry, legume and euphorbia families. What attracted attention was the fact that where these insects were observed, the plant trunks were covered with a coating of unknown origin.

The coating was a natural resin, which was later called “SHELLAC”.

After careful study, it turned out that the coating is released by the shoots of a young plant under the influence of females of Kerry laki or, as they say now, the lac bug. And these strange mosquitoes are none other than male varnish bugs. All that remains is to collect the resin and conduct research on the strange mass. Our scientists bred lacquer bugs in Abkhazia, Azerbaijan and Central Asia.

Before the advent of polyvinyl chloride, shellac was the raw material for the production of gramophone records.

The appearance of a sufficiently durable material was vitally important - plastics could not withstand prolonged abuse by steel pickup needles and quickly lost their properties.

The very concept of a “vinyl record” appeared after the Second World War, when the largest record manufacturer Columbia created the technology of “long” records, the basis of which was a new material - vinylite. Thanks to this material, as well as technologies of compacted recording, microgrooves and reduced playback speed, vinyl records with entire albums of artists appeared.

Vinyl itself is a monovalent organic radical (CH CH2), and the record, accordingly, is a polyvinyl chloride alloy.

In 1934, American commentator Walter Winchell coined the term “disc jockey” to refer to his colleague Martin Block, who played music from records between news reports, creating the complete illusion that the broadcast was being broadcast from a dance hall. The program had crazy ratings!!!

In the first quarter of the last century, the speeds of produced gramophone records fluctuated in the range of 74-82 revolutions per minute, which was due to the imperfection of mechanical spring gramophones. Thus, when listening, the sound often “floated”, which did not add comfort. It was only in 1925, when the electric synchronous motor began to be used in the mechanism of turntables, that the first speed standard appeared. True, he was slightly different in different sides ocean. The connection was made to the frequency of the supplied power supply (60 or 50 Hertz) and the speed of the synchronous electric motor, which set the mechanism in motion, depending on it. In the States, the speed was 78.26 rpm (the engine made 3600 revolutions through a reduction gearbox with a 46:1 ratio), in Europe 77.92 (3000 with a reduction of 38.5:1).

The very first records had a diameter of 7 inches (actually 6.89) or 175 millimeters (we called them “minions”). This is the oldest of the standards of this kind, it appeared in the 90s of the last century. If you now see in some catalog of records, opposite the name you are interested in, the inscription 7" single or some other number before the sign ", then this is precisely the designation of the diameter in inches. If we add to the not so impressive size the high rotation speed and the decent thickness of the then track, we get about 2 minutes of sound on one side. At the same time, records became double-sided not from the very moment of their appearance, but only from 1903 thanks to the developments of the Odeon company. In the same year, the first 12" wheels appeared (actually 11.89", or 300 mm). It is the plates of this form factor that are now most familiar to our eyes (in some countries, variants two millimeters larger than required were occasionally produced). In ancient times, they were mainly used to release excerpts from operas and classical works, since up to five minutes of sound could fit on one side.

The third most popular form factor was the 10" (250 mm) size. These records began to actively gain popularity in 1910. Still, they could hold one and a half times more entertainment than a standard seven. However, in any case, the joy of owning records in that time was overshadowed by the fact that they quickly lost their consumer qualities. The mechanical sound pickup equipment treated the track quite harshly. The pickup weighed up to 130 grams, and the steel needles had to be changed after each play of the side.

A qualitative leap occurred at the end of the 20s, when instead of the mechanoacoustic method of recording through a horn, they began to use the electroacoustic method - through a microphone. By reducing distortion, the sound quality has sharply increased and its frequency range has risen from 150-4000 Hertz to 50-10000. The weight of the pickup has also been reduced. Now he weighed no more than 80 grams. However, a crisis soon arose due to the beginning of the spread of tape recorders, for which records could not hold a candle in terms of playback time.

In 1931, the English physicist Blumlein proposed a method of stereo recording in one groove, but low technical level at that time did not allow us to carry out our plans. In the same 30s, the concept of “album” appeared in connection with gramophone records. Since almost each of them contained one single composition on the side, they were often sold not only in paper envelopes, but also in cardboard or leather boxes in which several of them were placed. Due to the external similarity of such boxes with photo albums, they began to be called record albums.

The next evolutionary stage came at the end of the Second World War. In 1948, the largest record company, Columbia, developed new system recording of “long-playing” records, for which a special polymer material, vinylite, was created (domestic discs were made of polyvinyl chloride). Long-playing records, due to the use of compacted recording with microgrooves that became three times narrower, and a reduction in the playing speed to 33 1/3 revolutions per minute, made it possible to record works whose duration reached 30 minutes for one side. At the same time, the noise level decreased and the frequency range expanded to 16,000 Hz. In addition, the record became unbreakable. That is, if you wanted, you could break it, but even if you threw such a plate at the wall, it did not crumble into pieces every time, but springing back, strove to take revenge on the careless thrower.

The following year, RCA developed its own alternative phonograph record standard with a diameter of 175 mm with a larger central hole and rotation speed 45 rpm. They found greatest use as media for playback on jukeboxes.

All three standards existed for some time in parallel. 78s died out in most countries in the 50s. In India they were released in the 60s and even in the 70s, some records for children were released in this format.

In 1950, the first samples of vinyl with variable recording pitch appeared, which made it possible to increase playback time by another 30%. As you can imagine, the 33 and one third standard was most attractive to the end consumer due to the duration of playback. Such records became known as Long Play or LP for short. Significantly less of the competitors could fit on the circles. Accordingly, depending on the contents of the forty-five (not to be confused with a light cannon from the times of the 2nd World War), the names Single, Maxi-Single or Extended Play (EP) were used. The maximum length of this format was 25 minutes. Do not think that there were no other variants of the disc.

The last revolutionary step in turning records into what we know today occurred in 1958. Two were brought together in one groove audio channels and two cutting principles. To put it simply, the needle caught vibrations both vertically (right channel) and horizontally (left channel). In fact, the edges of the groove were tilted by 45 degrees each. In the laboratories, even after this exhaustive achievement, they tried to figure out what else could be squeezed out of a piece of vinyl.

In 1971, the first quadraphonic systems appeared, in which four-channel sound was captured from vinyl. The effect was achieved due to the difference in phases of the signals superimposed on one “side” of the track. As usual, there was some competition here too. The systems were presented by CBS and Sansui and were called very interestingly - SQ and QS, respectively. However, commercial success turned its back on both. Apparently, cost has become the main stumbling block, because in in this case In addition to mechanical sensitivity, the reproducing apparatus required strong analog brains. Be that as it may, their efforts were not in vain, because these developments became the predecessors of the surround sound system and modern home theaters.

Since the late 70s, disc reading equipment has been actively developed to minimize any possible damage caused by the cartridge to the track. By this time, needles had long existed that made it possible to spin the same record under them up to two thousand times. The weight of the pickup has been reduced to two to five grams. The Japanese company ELPJ tried in the 1990s, when the CD was already crowding out vinyl on all fronts, to read sound with a laser. However, dust in this matter turned out to be an insurmountable obstacle - no matter how much you wipe the surface, you will not get rid of it completely, but the laser reads the dusty track and produces a corresponding sound.

Nowadays, manufacturers of vinyl records can be counted on one hand. And, despite such a surge of attention to vinyl - both from ordinary users and from DJs, the number of record producers is still not increasing. Of these companies, it is especially worth noting the Optimal plant, located near Berlin, in the city of Robel. They are trying to revive the production of vinyl records, and they are doing very well. It is interesting that the plant director collects the equipment “from the woods” - some from India, some from Russia, some from European countries, and some units are even rented from recording museums. Now this plant produces more than four million records a year, including singles and albums from many famous artists. For example, Optimal recently released bright pink vinyl discs of Madonna's album.

Don't forget about domestic factories. Once upon a time, in the vast expanses of the USSR, vinyl production was the largest in the world.

On September 1, 1910, an event occurred that became epoch-making for music lovers in the vast expanses of Russia at that time - a factory for the production of domestic gramophone records was opened in Aprelevka, near Moscow. Over time, it became the largest record producer in Russia, and then in the USSR.

The plant was built by two German entrepreneurs Gottlieb (Bogdan) Moll and his son Johann (Ivan) (financier and recording specialist). In the first year, 400 thousand gramophone discs were released under the Metropol and Record brands. They all dispersed to fairs, bazaars, shops and shops of the empire in a matter of weeks. They began to be played at weddings and name days, farewells, get-togethers and tea parties, and family evenings. Huge gramophone pipes carried Russian folk songs, ditties, romances, arias, and marches. The first records had two holes in the center and were played from the middle to the edge. Then the diameter gradually increased and even reached half a meter. But such impressive dimensions led to an increase in the size of the gramophone.

The factory's new life began after the revolution, when production was nationalized. Johann Moll was first put in Butyrka, and then, already seriously ill, was released abroad in 1927. By the way, his son, drafted into the German Air Force in 1945, was captured and spent some time in Soviet camps in Ufa and Chelyabinsk. Then he returned to Germany, but visited the USSR several times, including to the famous plant founded by his grandfather.

In the first post-revolutionary years, gramophone records were actively used for propaganda and agitation. On the direct orders of Lenin, who was a member of the gramophone propaganda department at Tsentropechat, the Aprelevskaya factory began producing records with recordings of speeches by new Russian leaders. By the way, several of Lenin’s speeches were recorded on it. But the shellac reserves soon ran out, and there was no opportunity to purchase it abroad, and the factory stopped producing gramophone records.

By the early 1930s, the factory began producing records again, becoming the main producer in the USSR. It was soon transformed into a factory that employed more than a thousand people and produced an annual output of 19 million records. Since there were not enough raw materials for the production of records, an interesting form of collecting recyclable materials was invented. Part of the circulation of records began to be intended only for exchange for fragments of old records, which were melted down. On the records from these editions there was a special inscription “Not for sale. Exchange Fund".

During the war years, the production of records decreased significantly. Naturally, production was reoriented to produce products with patriotic content. It was at the Aprelevsky plant, already in the first days of the war, that “The Holy War” was recorded, performed by an ensemble led by Alexandrov.

The plant was able to reach its pre-war level only in 1949. Three years later they mastered production here LP records. And in 1961 the first stereophonic records were released. But regular 78 rpm records continued to be produced until 1971. After the revolution, the “Soviet Record” department was created. On the records of those years there was a swallow holding a golden-colored musical note in its beak. It became the emblem of the Aprelevsky plant.

A new stage in the life of the plant began in 1964, when the Melodiya recording company was created in the USSR, the main enterprise of which was the Aprelevsky plant, which produced up to 65% of all domestic gramophone records. The plant began to produce not only musical records, but also a significant number of records for children and educational ones. Entire generations grew up in the USSR on fairy tales recorded on April records. But the main shortage in the 60-80s was records of pop performers.

By the beginning of the 80s, the plant employed three thousand people, and the production of records exceeded 50 million per year. After 1991, when the Melodiya company collapsed, the Aprelevsky plant went “open sailing,” but did not last long. Circulations began to fall sharply: 33 million records in 1991 and only 10 million in 1992. In 1995, we had to completely stop producing records and switch to tape cassettes. To support people and preserve the team, the plant began to develop various production processes, including food packaging. The packages with instant noodles, on which the manufacturer was listed as “Aprelevsky Record Plant,” probably looked a bit strange.

In 2002, by decision of the Moscow Region Arbitration Court, the Aprelevsky Record Plant was declared bankrupt. Fortunately, it was possible to at least partially preserve the rich collection of the factory museum, the main exhibits of which were transferred to the Naro-Fominsk Museum of History and Local Lore, and some of the exhibits were distributed to school museums and libraries in the city, and some went to the children's art school. In 2007, the “Museum of Forgotten People and Things” opened on the former territory of the plant, which partially presents the history of the Aprelevsky record plant.

NNM.Ru