OK gang, though experiment project time. Given modern materials, fabrication, and a lot of design work done doing vinyl, what could be a modern design?
Here are some thoughts... characteristics of a Next Gen Vinyl, trying to preserve the elements that make vinyl good as a source (the relative simplicity of the encoding of an analogue wave, storing it analogue, playing it back analogue).
Vinyl - warps, wears, picks up mould if you neglect it. Causes the physical media to introduce noise and distortion in signal. So what would be better ...hard, tough, chemically stable, but can have a stereo record cut or masked or pressed into it cost-effectively.
Groove shape - it has to be spiral probably to give the pickup a continuous track. But maybe you can have two grooves interleaved for redundancy (let's assume the next gen groove can be super narrow), with two tracking styluses that you can read from independently, because then you can do skip searching and track selection.
Groove surface - The side-to-side force on the stylus to keep it following the groove is done using reaction force from the reading tip against the groove walls. Let's make the groove tracking separate from the signal reading... maybe have a mechanical stylus, but that reads groove depth/shape with laser or ultrasound or carbon nanotubes or whatever at the tip. You'd get less rumble and noise and distortion into the pickup, and no wear of the signal area of the media. In fact, the stylus would just be a suspension to position the read tip, which doesn't need to touch the surface.
Groove wall - since the groove can be an arbitrary depth with our magic material (maybe deep enough that the odB level is (say) 1/3 of the depth of the groove, and the walls can be perfectly parallel from the top of the groove floor to the media surface. Perfect side to side mechanical alignment in the groove for perfect stereo separation.
Media surface - if the media is made of some super hard, super tough, super long lasting material, the surface could be coated in diamond vapour to make it much harder than current vinyl, and impervious to heat. It would resist moulds, reject dirt (and maybe while it's spinning (it must spin, that goes without saying).
Signal output - the output from the stylus must be an electrical form of the original recording ... it must produce the same (say) 3mV common earth stereo signal. This needs amplification to line voltage only, no RIAA equalisation. This means it can't be fed into a normal phono stage - you could maybe get a "flat phono signal to RIAA phono signal" converter box. Toss the guys with the $2000 phono stages a bone, right? To make this a lot easier, you can bias or whatever your cartridge with a wire or two to it, let's not ham-string ourselves.
Equalisation -- if you can get around tracking and getting bounced out the groove solved, then you won't need to equalise, so bye bye RIAA curves which will save unwanted low frequency noise from being amplified so much in the eq stage.
Dunno, thought it may be interesting to come up with a plan for a completely analogue music format. Instead of a disc, try cylinders again. Holographic analogue storage. Carbon nanotubes. I like carbon nanotubes. :groovy:
Here are some thoughts... characteristics of a Next Gen Vinyl, trying to preserve the elements that make vinyl good as a source (the relative simplicity of the encoding of an analogue wave, storing it analogue, playing it back analogue).
Vinyl - warps, wears, picks up mould if you neglect it. Causes the physical media to introduce noise and distortion in signal. So what would be better ...hard, tough, chemically stable, but can have a stereo record cut or masked or pressed into it cost-effectively.
Groove shape - it has to be spiral probably to give the pickup a continuous track. But maybe you can have two grooves interleaved for redundancy (let's assume the next gen groove can be super narrow), with two tracking styluses that you can read from independently, because then you can do skip searching and track selection.
Groove surface - The side-to-side force on the stylus to keep it following the groove is done using reaction force from the reading tip against the groove walls. Let's make the groove tracking separate from the signal reading... maybe have a mechanical stylus, but that reads groove depth/shape with laser or ultrasound or carbon nanotubes or whatever at the tip. You'd get less rumble and noise and distortion into the pickup, and no wear of the signal area of the media. In fact, the stylus would just be a suspension to position the read tip, which doesn't need to touch the surface.
Groove wall - since the groove can be an arbitrary depth with our magic material (maybe deep enough that the odB level is (say) 1/3 of the depth of the groove, and the walls can be perfectly parallel from the top of the groove floor to the media surface. Perfect side to side mechanical alignment in the groove for perfect stereo separation.
Media surface - if the media is made of some super hard, super tough, super long lasting material, the surface could be coated in diamond vapour to make it much harder than current vinyl, and impervious to heat. It would resist moulds, reject dirt (and maybe while it's spinning (it must spin, that goes without saying).
Signal output - the output from the stylus must be an electrical form of the original recording ... it must produce the same (say) 3mV common earth stereo signal. This needs amplification to line voltage only, no RIAA equalisation. This means it can't be fed into a normal phono stage - you could maybe get a "flat phono signal to RIAA phono signal" converter box. Toss the guys with the $2000 phono stages a bone, right? To make this a lot easier, you can bias or whatever your cartridge with a wire or two to it, let's not ham-string ourselves.
Equalisation -- if you can get around tracking and getting bounced out the groove solved, then you won't need to equalise, so bye bye RIAA curves which will save unwanted low frequency noise from being amplified so much in the eq stage.
Dunno, thought it may be interesting to come up with a plan for a completely analogue music format. Instead of a disc, try cylinders again. Holographic analogue storage. Carbon nanotubes. I like carbon nanotubes. :groovy:
