Diagram
Disc records for audio have been manufactured since the late 19th century.
Although the process has changed gradually over the years, the basic principles of sound recording to disc have remained the same as the very first experiments.
Movie Part I
Movie Part II
And what some people do with records…
Back to the Groove
With all the technological advances in audio formats over the last few decades vinyl is still going strong, record collectors and dance music enthusiasts have been keeping the sound format alive when major record labels lost interest in the late 1980’s along with the general public. More recently record labels in Japan, North America and Europe are getting back into the groove by releasing special limited edition Albums and 45 records by popular demand.
Disc Jockey
Disc Jockeys came about in the U.S. during the 1930’s but beatmatching didn’t arrive until the late 1960’s and early 1970’s through Francis Grasso of the Bronx.
One of the first people to use twin turntables for continuous play was British DJ and T.V. personality Jimmy Savile. In the late 1940’s Jimmy paid a metalworker to weld two domestic record decks together, this was the very beginning of ‘twin-deck’ DJing, allowing two records to be played back to back continuously.
Hip Hop DJs in New York took vinyl record play to a new level with scratching and beat juggling in the 1970’s, vinyl records have since become an intrinsic part of the dance music scene.
Digital Jockey
Some DJs now use laptop computers or
purpose built digital modules to mix. Beatmatching software is designed to beat-match digital tracks with great accuracy.
The software can effectively beat-match for you, if you need it to, some working DJs now openly admit to having never bought a vinyl record in their life.
At some point in the future some night club owners are going to question the need for a DJ? - when you can programme a computer to do the job for you and still promote the night as live mixing. Some people embrace the new technology 100% for its ease of use whereas others regard this style as untrue to the roots of DJing, others simply work between vinyl and digital by burning downloaded digital files to CD, however copyright licenses should be respected.
Analog
Downsides of vinyl include the large amounts of space they take up, the weight, scratches, specks of dust and wear to the disc which can be heard as noise or static. Records should always be placed back in their sleeves avoiding touching the vinyl surface with greasy fingers.
Cd’s that are lightly scratched become totally unplayable and are prone to jumping whereas vinyl records that are scratched often still play, the CD is just as fragile if not more so than the vinyl record. Record collectors accept light surface noise on certain records as it allows the audio a unique history and can indicate years of loving play.
Vinyl can be placed on the turntable in an instant, you can pin point exactly where the needle should fall accessing any part of a song immediately with no forward tracking, there is a physical response from the needle to the groove, through the turntable into the mixer and then into the amp and then out again through the speakers, 100% analog.
Channels are grooved into the vinyl disc when an original sound’s waveform is recorded. No information is lost, the sound is mirrored. Record players emit sound as analog, they feed directly to the amp with no need for conversion i.e. analog to analog rather than analog to digital and then back to analog.
In an image conscious world musicians can create detailed artwork and fit a large graphic on a record’s jacket or sleeve. Also, you can choose the colour of the vinyl rather than having to settle for a silver CD or non-tangible MP3, put simply digital formats lack the aesthetic benefits of vinyl records.
Digital
MP3s are easy to store on CDR or on your P.C. and work for many people as their only sound format, with the development of the I-Pod, portability is digitals forte.
Digital recordings don’t degrade over time, however if your computer is not backed up, any crash or virus that effects the p.c. could result in total loss of your record collection, it’s the equivalent to your house burning down in vinyl terms. Backing up your digital music collection is time consuming but can save you time and money, this will need to be done whenever you upgrade your p.c. Downloading music files can also be stressful, some files may become corrupt or damaged, like any download, bugs and errors can be inherent, this is then compounded by time wasted trying to contact the download source to resend the download (check download forums for examples).
MP3s can be burned to disc but CD-Rs often have a much shorter shelf life than both vinyl and normal Cd’s depending on quality and storage conditions, It also takes time to copy the art work, this is essential otherwise you will end up with a pile of anonymous looking blank Cd’s in your rack that will never get played.
A down side of MP3 is reduced sound quality. Original sound is analog by definition, vinyl doesn’t sample sound it records it in a natural state as a vibration.
Digital recordings take approximate snapshots of an analog signal at a certain rate, this means that, unlike vinyl, a digital recording does not capture the complete sound wave, it makes up the bits in between so you will get a less true sound of the original source.
A stereo, computer or CD player simply converts a digital recording back into an analog signal which is then fed to the amplifier, the amp then increases the voltage of the signal to drive the speaker.
Digital sound is sometimes described as narrow, flat and compressed for these reasons, whereas vinyl is often described as sounding more analog, a deep, rich, wide sound, the qualities of the original recording are more audible on vinyl.
The Future
Vinyl’s strength has always been it’s superior sound quality. Dance music DJs and record collectors have helped keep vinyl a cool format. Other music formats and electronics manufacturers have simply chosen to work with vinyl rather than against it ensuring the formats longevity.
Record labels are releasing popular records on vinyl again, from DJ Shadow to the Klaxons, thin plastic discs remain and intrinsic part of the music industry, in fact the music industry has built its reputation on them.
Vinyl records will never be as popular as they were in the 1960’s, but if used in conjunction with other modern formats, vinyl will continue to reign as a champion sound format.
Records are now over 100 years old and still going strong - praise be to the plastic disc.
(CNN news clip on record labels pressing vinyl again)
(On behalf of HeyDj.com dance music records UK).
1806: Englishman Thomas Young records the vibrations of a tuning fork on a rotating drum covered with wax but Young has no way of playing back the sound.
1856: Alexander Parkes develops ’Parkesine’ in Birmingham, UK. This is generally considered to be the first plastic.
1857: Frenchman Leon Scott de Martinville converts air pressure fluctuations caused by sound into an undulating line on a sooty surface by way of pig’s hair, a large horn and a diaphragm but has no method of playback, he names this the ‘Phonoautograph‘.
1857: Hermann von Helmholtz notices that he can make the music strings in his piano vibrate when he sings into it. He then causes a tuning fork to vibrate and produce sound by switching an electromagnet on and off. This principle is the basis of the audio speaker.
1874: W.H. Barlow builds The Logograph, this creates a graphic representation of the sound vibrations produced by speech.
1876: Alexander Graham Bell invents the “telephone” which spurs on other sound devices.
1877: The first disc records are described as part of a sound recording and reproduction device by Charles Cros of France, this is never built.
1877: Through experimenting with an early type of answerphone, Thomas Edison runs paraffin coated paper under a stylus while shouting into a telephone speaker, the vibrations leave a faint impression of his voice which can be played back. He soon replaces the paper with a rotating drum coated in tin foil which runs underneath the stylus. A clearer speech like noise emanates which gives Edison the idea to be able to record and also play back a sound source - “Mary had a little lamb.” Later that year he builds the first Phonograph choosing the rotating drum over flat discs as a format.
1877: E.W. Siemens in Germany and the team of Cuttris and Redding in the U.S. develop the dynamic microphone. In this device, the diaphragm is attached to a light coil that generates voltage through electromagnetic induction as it moves back and forth between the poles of a permanent magnet.
1881: Charles Tainter makes the first lateral-cut records in the Volta laboratories of Alexander Graham Bell in America - still no method of playback for disc records.
1883: Thomas Edison accidentally discovers what comes to be known as the “Edison Effect” which later become the basis of the electron tube, and the foundation of the electronics industry in the 20th century.
(Top left, a hand-driven Berliner gramophone from 1893, top right, an Edison Bell phonograph made in 1904. Bottom left is a Columbia gramophone. Bottom right, a Berliner toy gramophone from 1890)
1885: Chichester Bell and Charles Tainter build an improved phonograph at Volta Lab, it uses a wax coated cylinder scored with vertical-cut grooves, they name it the “Graphophone“.
1887: Edison uses a solid wax cylinder in the phonograph, a battery-driven motor now powers the machine instead of the hand crank system resulting in a constant pitch.
1888: Emile Berliner perfects playable 7″ Lateral-cut disc records as the format for his “Gramophone“, these discs are initially only used in toys, the vulcanised rubber discs are easy to reproduce from the zinc master which is coated in wax. - Around this time Edison and Bell are at constant legal war over patent disputes.
1889: Columbia Phonograph Co. is founded. The company tries marketing graphophones to businesses but later finds better revenue by recording music and leasing them to fairgrounds, where they find great favour as the first nickel juke boxes.
1890: Phonograph cylinders can now record audio up to a maximum of 4 minutes and juke boxes become a powerful commodity in the music industry.
1894: Berliner’s American Gramophone company sell many electric and hand powered Gramophones, manufacturing thousands of disc records to go with them. In this year an early form of Radio is invented in Italy by Guglielmo Marconi.
1896: A spring motor is added to the gramophone by Eldridge Johnson in New Jersey, U.S.A., this allows better ‘hands free’ power capabilities and portability.
(A Victrola Gramophone, courtesy of kevin in Canada)
1897: Vulcanite playback discs are superseded by Shellac discs which are part made from a species of Beetle.
1902: Ten inch disc records (10″) are made by the Gramophone Company and begin to feature many different international artists, these have a maximum play time of 4 minutes and are known as “Red Seal”.
1903: Twelve inch records (12″) are made (later to be become the standard dance music record release size).
1904: Double sided disc records become popular.
1906: The Victrola gramophone is designed by Eldridge Johnson and mass produced, it becomes a bench mark for record players for many years, appearing as a piece of furniture with the mechanism hidden from view, the record player becomes an acceptable piece of household furniture.
1912: Thomas Edison introduces the “Blue Amberol” cylinder which has a longer playing time than Berliners records but the recordings prove difficult to reproduce.
In this year the ‘Audion’ vacuum-tube amplifier is invented.
1917: The first Jazz record is recorded by the Original Dixieland Jass (Jazz) Band from New Orleans.
1918: The patents for the manufacture of lateral-cut disc records expire, other companies produce them and disc records become more popular than the cylinder format. In this year the first ever sounds of war are recorded - a gas shell bombardment.
Production of Amberol cylinders ceases in the late 1920’s and cut disc records govern the music market.
1925: Electrical amplification is used for recording and playback of discs offering a better frequency range for the audio.
1926: A lightweight piezo-electric stylus is designed by Charles Brush.
1927: The automatic juke box goes on sale.
1928: Pioneering work into what is later to become known as ‘Television‘ is carried out on ‘Phonovision’ wax discs by John Baird.
1930: RCA Victor launches the first commercially available vinyl long-playing record, marketed as “Program Transcription” discs. These discs are designed for playback at 33⅓ rpm and pressed on a 30 cm diameter flexible plastic disc. This is a commercial failure because of lack of affordable, reliable playback equipment and the Great Depression in America, not to mention the rising popularity of ’Radio’ (which is free).
1931: Harvey Fletcher, Arthur C. Keller and Leopold Stokowski manage to record and transmit monaural and binarual sound in the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. At the same time Alan Dower Blumlein files a patent application in for stereo recording in Britain.
1932: The first stereo disc is recorded by Stokowski at Bell labs in Philadelphia using vinyl rather than shellac, initially two separate grooves are made for each channel but Arthur Keller later creates a stereo recording in one groove.
By the mid 1930’s vinyl achieves a lower surface noise than shellac, radio commercials and programs are sent to disc jockeys (a term earned through jockeying up the next record) on the less brittle vinyl to avoid breakage in the mail, also World War II leads to short supplies of shellac. V-Disc produces 12″ 78 rpm records on vinyl for US troops and 16″ records for radio transcriptions.
Record collections are held in paper sleeves in a cardboard or leather book, similar to a photograph album, and called ‘record albums’ (some claim this term arrived as early as 1909). Vinyl records are sold in paper or printed card sleeves for protection, generally with a circular cutout allowing the record label to be seen.
1939: Columbia Records continue extensive development of the record to to improve recording and playing back concentrating on narrower grooves and developing an inexpensive, reliable consumer playback system, by the mid 1940’s, 78 rpm vinyl is the DJs choice cut. Magnetic Tape is invented in this year.
1940: Mobile DJs become popular around the world as entertainers for military troops during WWII, however they still only use a single record player.
1943: Jimmy Savile launches one of the world’s first DJ dance parties playing jazz records in an upstairs function room.
1947: One of the first people to use twin turntables for continuous play is British DJ and T.V. personality Jimmy Savile, Jimmy pays a metalworker to weld two domestic record decks together for more continuous play at his dance parties in Leeds. This style of ‘twin-deck’ DJing utilising a microphone for talk over becomes industry standard.
1947: The “Whiskey-A-Go-Go” opens in Paris playing popular records, this is considered by some to be the very first disco.
1948: Columbia Records introduce the 12″ vinylite Long Play (LP) 33⅓ rpm microgroove record album at a New York press conference. (often referred to as 33 rpm)
1949: RCA Victor release the first 45 rpm single in response to Columbia, seven inches (7″) in diameter, with a large center hole to accommodate automatic play mechanisms, a stack of singles can drop down one record at a time automatically after each play. Early 45 rpm records are made from either vinyl or polystyrene.
Both types of new disc used narrower grooves, intended to be played with a smaller stylus than the 78 - the new records were sometimes called Microgroove.
1948 to 1950: Record companies and consumers face uncertainty over which of these formats will prevail in what becomes known as the “War of the Speeds″.
On a small number of early phonograph systems and radio transcription discs, as well as some entire albums, the direction of the groove is reversed, beginning near the centre of the disc and leading to the outside. 
Jamaican R&B Sound Systems become popular also.
1950s: By the mid-50s all record companies agree to a common recording standard called RIAA equalization. Prior to this each company uses its own preferred standard, requiring listeners to use preamplifiers with multiple selectable equalization curves.
A number of recordings are pressed at 16⅔ RPM, but these are mostly used for radio transcription discs or narrated publications for the blind, some turntables with a 16 RPM speed setting are produced as late as the 1970s.
The older 78 format continue to be mass produced alongside the newer formats into the 1950s, and in a few countries, such as India, into the 1960s. As late as the 1970s, some children’s records are released at the 78 rpm speed.
Eventually the 12″ 33⅓ rpm LP prevails as the main format for musical albums, and the 7″ 45 rpm disc or “single” finds it niche as a shorter duration disc, usually containing one song on each side and both in stereo sound. The 45 rpm discs emulate the playing time of the former 78 rpm discs, while the LP discs provided up to one half hour of time per side. The 45 rpm discs also come in a variety known as Extended play (EP) which achieved up to 25 minutes play at the expense of attenuating (and possibly compressing) the sound to reduce the width required by the groove.
From the mid-1950s through the 1960s, in the US the “record player” or “stereo” typically has these features: a three- or four-speed player with changer a combination cartridge with both 78 and microgroove styluses; and some kind of adapter for playing the 45s with their larger center hole. The large center hole on 45s allows for easier handling by jukebox mechanisms. RCA 45s can also be adapted to the smaller spindle of an LP player with a plastic snap-in insert known as a ‘spider‘.
1960-1970s: During the mid 60’s Pirate Radio appears entertaining a younger ‘hipp’ audience.
Beatmatching is invented by Francis Grasso in the late 1960s and early 1970s by counting the tempo with a metronome and looking for records with a similar tempo. Later a mixer is built for him by Alex Rosner which allows him to listen to any channel in the headphones independently of what is playing on the speakers; this becomes the defining feature of DJ mixers. This and turntables with pitch control enable him to mix tracks with different tempos.
(Technics 1210 turntable courtesy of Brent K)
The first Technics SL-1200 turntable is released in 1974, this evolves into the SL-1200MK2, released in 1978, with a comfortable and precise sliding pitch control and high torque direct drive motor makes beat matching easier and turns it into the industry standard among DJs.
Vinyl records remain the DJs choice and a suburb of New York called ‘The Bronx’ becomes a catalyst for a new musical phenomena ‘hip hop’ (sometimes referred to as ‘turntablism‘).
DJ Kool Herc starts using two copies of the same record to extend break downs in records during 1973, ‘rappers’ later toast and rap stories over extended funk and disco breakbeats and in 1977 DJ Grand Wizard Theodore develops scratching through the rewind and Que of the next record, the DJ finds a sound and runs the needle back and forth using the record and turntable to create a scratch noise.
1980s-Present: Vinyl records are superseded by Compact Disc as a popular consumer format, these new formats supposedly reproduce better playback quality and are easier to handle being easily adapted to play in car stereos and Walkmans.
Major record labels almost completely cease to release vinyl records, concentrating more on digital formats but vinyl is kept alive by dance musicians and DJs.
Some Hi Fi stereos continue to be manufactured with with a turntable on top, electronics manufacturers also continue to develop and improve separate turn tables for record enthusiasts and DJs, the second hand vinyl market remains popular amongst “crate diggers“.
The availability of computers allows digital formats to reign, such as MP3, this leads to a decrease in sales for the CD, however various DJ turntables now appear as hybrids, allowing playback of more than one format.
Several high street chain record stores begin to stock vinyl albums and 7″ singles again with an increasing number of both download and vinyl record stores appearing online.
The story continues…
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