How Do Vinyl Records Work and How Do Record Players Work?

How do vinyl records work? (TL:DR;)

Here’s how sound is reproduced from vinyl records:

1. Vinyl records carry music in the form of thin grooves.
2. A record player gently applies a very sensitive needle (or “stylus”) to a spinning record, which vibrates as it runs through the grooves.
3. These vibrations are translated to electrical signals which are passed onto your amplifier and its speakers.
4. The speakers output the vibrations again in the form of sound waves that we hear

In this guide, I’ll explain exactly how vinyl records work and how record players work to reproduce the sound that comes on these shiny, large discs we love so much.

How is a vinyl record made?

Getting music produced and onto a record is quite a process, but here’s the simplified progress:

• The recording is created. In the studio, microphones are set up by sound engineers in various places around the musicians and their instruments.
• Microphones are used for recording the musicians’ sound waves and translate them into electrical signals. These signals are used to record sound to a medium. Traditionally that medium would be a high-quality magnetic tape (although digital recording is now more common). The record producer mixes and processes the tape tracks together to create a master tape.
• Creating the master disc(s). This is the stage where the recorded audio is etched onto an aluminum disc coated with black lacquer, using a lathe that holds an etching stylus. A mastering engineer, who ensures that vinyl playback of the pressed vinyl is as good as it can be.
• Stampers are created from the master lacquer disc(s). Stampers are metal (nickel) discs that become the mold for vinyl records to be made from the cut grooves. The “negatives” if you will – similar to photography.
• Pressing of records. The stampers are fitted to a pressing machine that presses a “biscuit” or hot PVC vinyl together with the record’s center labels into a round disk under high pressure. Excess vinyl that leaks out to the sides is cut off and voila: from one machine a fresh record is born. The record contains all the information to replicate the sound waves initially recorded.

(More on this topic here: How are Vinyl Records Made?)

Why vinyl records were on the verge of extinction

Those record collectors who remember the heyday of vinyl will also know that there are real downsides to buying and collecting vinyl records:

• They’re fragile and need to be handled with care. Although PVC is a hard type of plastic, vinyl records scratch easily. They can also warp if they’re exposed to heat or if you store them horizontally (or up against a hard edge) for a long period of time. They also wear out with frequent play or when they’re played on a low-quality record player.
• Sound quality can easily deteriorate. Scratches are a major cause of surface noise (the pops and clicks vinyl is known for). That can also simply be caused by static electricity build-up on a brand new record that’s never been played before.
• Their capacity is quite limited. A 12″ LP can fit around 20 minutes per side comfortably. For longer albums, audio quality has to be sacrificed (with more tightly packed grooves that can contain slightly less sonic information or “dynamic range”) or two discs are needed to contain a full album. Digital mediums like a computer hard drive offer a significantly increased storage size, with a capacity for far more music.
• They’re impractical. Sure, it’s nice to have physical music to play but there’s a reason why cassettes and CDs were physically smaller. With a 12″ diameter, an LP (or ‘album’) isn’t the easiest object to maneuver. Also, ever tried holding a small stack of records? They’re heavy!
• They’re pretty expensive. Even though for a while few people bought records anymore (around the change of the millennium), demand has skyrocketed in recent years and prices have been creeping up. Although you can find bargains on new records with large retailers, expect to spend $25-$40 on popular albums. Second-hand or used records are still a lot cheaper and can be a lot of fun to collect, but you need to know what you’re doing to avoid wasting money on badly worn-out records. If you want a better-than-decent vinyl record player setup, with receivers and speakers, that kind of system will also cost a lot more than a simple Bluetooth speaker would.

How do record players work?

So we’ve answered the question of “how do records work? but what about vinyl record players?

Let’s start with a brief history of record players.

Although the Phonograph (Thomas Edison) and the Gramophone (Emile Berliner) relied on a hand-crank mechanism to be able to spin the record, modern record players and turntables use a small electronic motor. These were some of the earliest tools used to record and playback sound. Other inventors have since improved on the first device from Thomas Edison and expanded the possibilities of this recording medium.

Typically, vinyl record players are either direct drive or belt drive. This determines how the platter (where the record sits) spins. While with a direct drive turntable the platter sits right on top of the motor, a belt-drive turntable has an offset motor that’s connected to the center spindle with a rubber belt.

Leaving the merits of direct drive turntables vs belt drive aside, for now, the only job that the motor fulfills is to spin the record at a steady pace, measured in revolutions per minute (rpm). Typically, record players spin records at 33 (albums) or 45 (singles) rpm, sometimes 78 rpm (old type of shellac records) as well.

Electrical signals also come into play when it comes to the needle (aka ‘stylus’) and the cartridge on a record player.

There’s a lot that happens inside record player cartridges. The cartridge refers to the small box-like shape attached to the tonearm, out of which the stylus protrudes. Its job is to convert mechanical energy picked up by the stylus into an electrical signal.

At one end of the stylus, there is what’s called a “piezoelectric crystal” that runs through the groove. These are commonly made of an industrial diamond mounted to the cantilever (a lightweight metal bar). The metal bar presses the tip into the spiral groove as the vinyl record spins.

Although a vinyl record player can have different cartridge types (Moving Coil (MC), or Moving Magnet cartridge (MM)), the concept is the same: As the stylus vibrates from the record’s groove into the headshell, the movement of a magnet and (one or more) coils create electrical signals. Essentially the cartridge converts energy created by the magnetic field into electrical energy as the turntable rotates.

What happens when you play a record

Now that you have a basic idea of how vinyl works, let me show you the chain of events that takes place when you spin a record.

1. After you power up your record player and pop on a record, (gently!) lower the needle at the start of the first track.
2. As the stylus moves through the sharp twists and turns of the record groove, vibrations are generated at a range of frequencies.
3. The needle is attached to a tiny magnet inside its headshell and the movement generated causes the magnet to move in between two copper coils. The movement of the stylus vibrations generates an electrical signal via the phenomenon of electromagnetism.
4. This electric signal is sent through to an amplifier, increasing the level of the signal before it reaches your speakers
5. As the electrical signal reaches the speaker, a similar magnet and coil mechanism causes the surface of your speaker to move, creating the sound vibrations which move the air particles.
6. That mechanical energy is what we hear with our ears, while our brain interprets these physical movements. This is known as psychoacoustic perception and is a key component of how sound waves work and are interpreted by humans.

Sources

1. http://www.gzvinyl.com/About-vinyl.aspx