This is one reason why mastering a recording for vinyl release is an important step in creating a high-quality end product. High frequency and sibilant sounds, particularly with vocals and cymbals, can turn into distortion on a vinyl record if not mixed properly.
In fact, higher frequencies can sound fine on playback from WAV files, but when transferred to vinyl, some of those bright, sibilant frequencies can turn into a crispy buzz. This can result from various factors, but specific frequencies, mixed improperly or lacking proper compression, can ultimately be too prominent and distort on playback. The same recording can sound fine on a 24 bit WAV file, and might replicate perfectly on a CD or other digital product. One way to avoid sibilance issues is simply to choose the correct microphone and employ an effective pop filter in the recording process.
Knowing from the outset that vinyl will be your ultimate end product can affect choices you make all the way back to the pre-production and arranging stages. The use of a de-esser in these situations can also be a key and is highly recommended when mixing and mastering for vinyl release. It compresses those frequencies to keep them from jumping out and becoming a problem in playback.
Sounds are produced by vibrations and travel through the air as waves, which are vibrating particles. The waves transfer energy from the source of the sound out to its surroundings. Your ear detects sound waves when vibrating air particles cause your eardrum to vibrate. The bigger the vibrations the louder the sound. The grooves you can see on a vinyl record are actually sound waves or more like a type of fingerprint of the sound waves captured in a lacquer disc that we call a vinyl record.
These three-dimensional grooves cut in the vinyl record are a recording of how the sound waves behave as they move through the air. A typical record player has a type of needle called a stylus that is placed gently on the vinyl record resting in the beginning of one of the grooves.
As the vinyl disc steadily rotates the stylus moves through the wavy three dimensional grooves. The stylus is a tiny crystal of sapphire or diamond mounted at the very end of a lightweight metal bar like a needle. As the crystal vibrates in the groove, its microscopic bounces are transmitted down the bar.
The stylus fits onto the end of an electromagnetic device called a cartridge, containing a piezoelectric crystal. The 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. This post answers the question, how do vinyl records work? Any feedback, questions or comments, get in touch through the links below or email us. The circular rotating thingy that the record is placed onto; AKA the Platter.
The system, or lever, which holds the cartridge and stylus in place above the record.
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