Digital Needle - Playing phonograph records with a scanner

http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~springer/DigitalNeedle/

by phreeza • 16 years ago

52 14 16 years ago

phys.huji.ac.il

leed25d• 16 years ago

It seems to me that I read once of a device at the Library of Congress which is a purpose built laser scanner for extracting such waveforms from old records, even the drums.

jessevondoom3• 16 years ago

Yeah they're IRENE scanners. Pretty amazing, actually. Able to lift sound off the most delicate old recordings. Probably a lot of possibility for repair of lost fragments visually:

http://irene.lbl.gov/

And there are laser turntables for commercial purposes as well. Not a visual product, in interesting still...

qq66• 16 years ago

Related: http://www.elpj.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable

tintin• 16 years ago

Some time ago I wondered if this could be done with a small CCD (Like the one in your mouse, see the mouse-scanner project: http://spritesmods.com/?art=mouseeye). I tried it once, but it's very hard to do this in real-time.

jessevondoom3• 16 years ago

And for the record, there are some pretty unique distortions here. I know a lot of artists who'd be pretty excited about the samples themselves...there's something special about them being a byproduct of a unique process as opposed to a clicked button or three in protools.

rflrob• 16 years ago

Any idea what those ~2Hz distortions are? In the a and c series recordings, they have a very strong pitch change, coming in groups of 4...

jessevondoom3• 16 years ago

Was wondering the same thing, but I've got no idea. Curious if blur from the visual scan of denser grooves has anything to do with it. Really interesting sound.

J3L2404• 16 years ago

Coming in groups of four the likely culprit is a slight misalignment in the assembly of the pieces of the scan.

nopassrecover• 16 years ago

If those distortions were filtered it sounds pretty accurate.

cubicle67• 16 years ago

so, how long before we get an augmented reality app that lets you play your (parents) records just by pointing your iPhone at them?

tibbon• 16 years ago

Actually, that sounds like a pretty good app. Shopping for a CD and want to hear it (or at least previews) now? Scan the barcode or album cover and boom.. music

I'd pay $4.99 for that app.

jorgem• 16 years ago

People still shop for CD's in stores?

michaelbuckbee• 16 years ago

Similar, but for DVD+Netflix - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2097527

phreeza• 16 years ago

Reading up on Wikipedia, I think he got the encoding wrong. The samples he plays are the diff between left and right. Now I want to try this... but I don't have a scanner handy. Can anyone scan a record for me?

Digital Needle - Playing phonograph records with a scanner

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