How does vinyl make sound

They both work on the principle of using movement to induce current thanks to magnetic fields. But, as the names imply, in one the magnet moves to induce current while in the other the coil does so and the magnet is fixed.

Or, if your amplifier is a line-level device, as many are, a dedicated phono stage. What exactly does a phono stage do? The physical limitations of vinyl mean that the original signal has to be altered before it can be recorded — low frequencies are reduced in level and the highs are boosted. Every phono stage has the reverse response built into it — one that boosts bass and flattens treble to exactly the right degree. The result should be a tonally even presentation.

A phono stage is also an amplifier. So rather than the witchcraft we always sort-of suspected it must be, getting a sound from a vinyl disc turns out to be nothing more than fiendishly clever. It's worth bearing in mind the ingenuity at play when you next carefully place the tip of your stylus into the groove of a LP — but don't dwell on it for all that long.

After all, there's music to be listened to. He's been been reviewing hi-fi, TV and home cinema equipment for over two decades, and over that time has covered thousands of products. The vinyl disc is cooled with water and viola… a finished vinyl record is born.

Once a vinyl record is made, it is played on a record player. A record player is sometimes called a turntable. Turntables spin wheels using an electric motor. Some are called direct-drive turntables, which use gears to turn the table, and some are called belt-drive turntables, which use a rubber belt and central axle to turn the table. The cartridge and stylus of a record player trace the groove in the record to reproduce the sound information contained there.

With modern music today, sound waves are basically stored on tiny computers. The microcomputers available in this generation can house everything from photos, to videos, to games and apps, to text files, to music. Music is merely information, just like everything else. In digital form, that music or information is stored as numbers. Digital information can be read in a number of different ways. A computer hard drive reads and records sound by moving a tiny electromagnetic arm on a disk that spins at high speed.

The arm writes that information in little magnetic zones. Music can also be stored on flash memory music players by recording sound using something called transistors. Transistors basically amount to tiny electrical switches. And of course, there are compact discs. Does your brain hurt yet? With the arrival of the digital age, all of these modes of recording and retaining information could be stored and saved even if there was no power source.

Unfortunately, the digital age has some drawbacks, especially when it comes to music. Long before the digital age came along, devices like Thomas Edison's phonograph were born.

The phonograph is considered the granddaddy of modern record players today. The word phonograph actually means sound-writer. Essentially, the phonograph recorded and stored sound mechanically by etching sound waves or more accurately, the electrical signal of the sound waves with a needle, onto tinfoil cylinder.

The cylinder was rotated by a hand crank and the needle moved to cut a groove into the tinfoil, recording the sound wave signal. A needle and amplifier were used to reverse the process in the case of the phonograph, the amplifier was a horn and the recorded sound was then played back.

Of course, the phonograph had many limitations, but it was the early vision of what would later become known as the record player. Originally, Thomas Edison created the phonograph as a way to record dictation, with intentions for using it in office work and as a way for teachers to record lessons.

The process is quite fascinating. Once a final mix is created whether digitally or on analog tape , it is played back and the signal routed into a device called a cutting lathe ; this usually occurs at a specialized facility called a mastering studio. Using a diamond needle, the lathe cuts a continuous spiral groove into an aluminum disc covered in lacquer; this groove, which runs from the outside of the disc to the inside, is an analog representation of the sound waves.

The right channel is carried by the side closest to the outside of the record, and the left is carried by the inside wall. The stamper is then loaded into a hydraulic press and pushed into soft vinyl to create the final record, which typically comes in 7-, and inch diameters.

The record is placed on a turntable, which is a circular plate usually covered with rubber to prevent scratching. The actual transformation of energy is the job of the cartridge , to which is attached a stylus — a needle made of a hard substance like a small piece of industrial diamond.

These sit on the end of a tone arm mounted on the record player; as the record spins, the tone arm follows the grooves and spirals inward. Note that the size and shape of the tone arm can affect audio quality too, as described in this blog. The vibrations picked up by the stylus travel to the cartridge, where they are converted to an electrical signal.

Cartridges come in two types: moving magnet MM and moving coil MC , each of which have slightly different output levels. If your record player has a phono preamp stage, it can be connected to a dedicated phono input on your receiver, if it has one.

This not only raises the level of the signal coming from the cartridge, but serves another important function.