check this out.... (Digital Needle - A Virtual Gramophone)

check this out....

http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~springer/click me

 

Very interestink...thanks!

 

The laser turntable does exist. It's called the ELP and used to cost $10K US, although I think the cost has gone down recently. While this isn't cheap, there are a few conventional turntables that cost more than that... actually, I think there are even cartridges that cost more than that.

The main issues with it are dust (they ship them with a VPI record cleaner as any dust particles will translate to a loud pop) and they cannot read clear or coloured vinyl.

 

The laser-based turntable was (IIRC) being developed by a company called Finial. The other turntable with a light in the tonearm was (again IIRC) was made by ADC. They used the light to find the spaces between the cuts on an album allowing you (by remote control?) to have direct access to any cut on an album side simply by punching in the cut "number".

dave

 

Does nobody read my posts?

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11738&highlight=digital+needle

 

Hmmm, if this could be perfected we would be able to listen to a digital approximation of an analog source.

Still, an interesting project and imagination to create such a thing. Might be fun to try.

P.S. Was that a reference to Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy in his e-mail address?

 

Hi,
While the thought of analog to digital back to analog might scare a few people, the laser turntable does have a few interesting features. One, it can play broken discs. The ELP guys I remember demonstrated this by placing a 78 broken into a couple of pieces and were able to extract sound from it. (Didn't M. Fremer go to a demonstration of the turntable and ask why for US$10k it didn't come with remote control?(I imagine this would also work with broken glass acetates, which I understand there are quite a few out there (I just hope the pieces have been kept) and even moldy wax cylinders. It also might be very good for archiving purposes. If it's found that the medium is being eaten by some shellac worm, this could be a way of preserving the contents in multiple locations in such a way that if knew extraction techniques were developed, replicas of the original media would be available. Moreover, it might allow more people to get their hands on replicas of the media. Jeff

 

Sorry, who said that?

 

Despite the icon, I'm just joking around. Yes, these things happen. All is well... don't sweat it.

 

Yeah, you can get the from flaminglips.com. They have a bunch of AOL icons, flash "videos" and more. Great site!

 

Actually, most of the major record companies own the laser turntable. Its good for certain types of transfers where there is groove damage and and the master cannot be played anymore conventionally. I know Sony has one in their transfer studio. I think it was used on a Benny Goodman concert at Carnagie Hall that was recorded onto 16 inch transcription disks....I think I read that somewhere.

Tell you what...if they could ever get the price down to 1,999 they would sell a TON of them. I think many folks would buy that and a stand alone Cd burner and simply "play and burn" and have pristine noise free CDR copies of their priceless Lps. So what if you have to clean the Lp spotlessly? You only have to do that once.

I think they key is the lasers....the laster table needs 5 of 'em. If they could get that down to one or two, that might do the trick.

I'd buy this!!

 

US$2000 is still a lot, but if it had remote control, well then maybe. Jeff

 

Actually, this isn't an issue. There is no AD/DA converter or anything digital in the signal path at all. Just because it has a laser doesn't mean it's digital. Witness pre-PCM laserdiscs, which are completely analog -- although most people will insist that because they look like giant CDs, they *must* be digital.

I've not heard this unit for myself; I've only read posts from others who claim to have. One person claimed the sound was very harsh and bright, another said it was fine and there was zero rumble, surface noise, and inner groove distortion.