Whatever happened to optical playback of vinyl?

And it's not, remember Laser Disc, analog video, analog audio and digital audio, all on an optical disc read by a laser beam.

 

CD happened.

 

To be precise here, you are saying it's a bit baffling that people would assume something that picks up information via a laser, would be inherently digital, is that what you mean?
Or, are you saying, it's a bit baffling to see a device with a laser as a pickup component, not be inherently digital? You can take that post both ways.

Personally yes, I think it is a bit baffling that one would start with a laser to read the information, and the process from there wouldn't stay within the digital realm from there onward. This at first glance, seems to be the first refinment they could have made to the design early on, and probably saved some cost, which seems to be the device's major hurdle to getting customers to try the thing. If you just want to represent this thing to the public as a linear turntable (thing back in the B&O days) with a laser instead of a stylus, well, no, I don't see why that would be a viable product for general consumption. And, there you are, right on the ""Wah-wahhhhh!" Track to obselescence as indeed it appears to be.

 

Big issues are 1: cost, ELPJ is still the only manufacturer of such turntables. 2: there is still NO USA service facility (if your ELPJ Laser Turntable requires alignment or laser replacement, must be sent to Japan). 3: The process requires machine cleaned records, often de-clicking in hardware in real time necessary, and 4: The ELPJ Laser Turntable also does poorly with very loudly cut records. Lastly. this machine can NOT PLAY colored vinyl. This technology is not really ready for most users yet. It has it's niche. If the gentleman behind ELPJ dies off, the machines would also be orphaned in regards to parts and service support.

 

This statement, to me, is baffling. The table is 100% analog, so it's never in the digital realm at any point.

 

What do you mean "stay within the digital realm". It isn't digital to begin with. You have a laser beam directed at the groove, and a photo diode (or two, since we have stereo) which reads the light reflected from the disc surface. The output from that photo diode will be an analogue waveform representing the wiggles of the groove. From there you apply RIAA equalization, and you're done. All analogue, nothing digital going on.

What refinement exactly are you referring to? You would have to build an A/D converter into the machine to get a digital signal, but what would be the purpose of that? To do some fancy DSP processing? It's not the job of a record player to do that, if the listener wants any audio processing apart from RIAA, he can always daisy chain his own DSP device behind the turntable. But there is nothing inherent in the laser pickup why you would want to do that. You could build a DSP into a conventional turntable.

The major cost is very likely in the complicated tracking control which has to detect the location of the grooves optically, recompute the location of the laser pickup, and move it to its new destination. All of that in very short time because it probably has to be done several times a second. The development cost of that mechanism must have been high, and the manufacturing cost probably is too. There's probably a microcomputer doing all that, and that is of course digital, but it's not in the signal path.

The selling point is: No physical contact, absolutely no wear of the record, and several other disadvantages of the needle/groove system completely eliminated as well.

 

Are you saying, declicking is hardwired into the machine? If so they must have a DSP with A/D and D/A converters built in, which I was theorising about in my previous post. But digitisation is still not inherent in the laser pickup process.

 

No, it is an extra external component you need to buy. Most people will need a hardware declicker for optical playback.

 

Lasers themselves are not digital.

 

Here's a rerun of my message on May 31, 2017
Your Personal Dream Turntable
------

A slot-LP-load, into a laser scanner that scans both sides of the disk in 30 seconds. No, in 3 seconds.
It instantly decodes and digitizes the groove into 256/256 or better and removes clicks and pops and scratches and original rumble and groove damage both audio-electronically and graphically, and indexes tracks. All the data is held in memory for play as it writes it to an SD card.
It then plays back as it spits an inch of the disc out for you to grab.

Upgrade models move the record up to a simulated turntable and arm to look like it is playing the record. Different models could look like a Victrola, a 1930s turntable, a 1950s turntable, a $19.95 1960s special, a GE Wildcat, an AR, a 1200, a current Crosley, a Rega, or Amadeus, or whatever.

For $500. No, $250. No, $99.

Unfortunately this would mostly self-defeat itself as you could just play from the SD card afterward. But the simulation could still simulate.

This is technically possible right now, but maybe not yet in 3 seconds or for $500.

Edit: it includes Plangent and Capstan. Of course. Auto-sensing.

 

ELP used to send demo CDs of their laser turntable. I had a couple of them. Just wasn't very good sounding IMO. The most impressive thing is what it was able to do with cracked or damaged records, which is why it's more valuable as a tool for archives and restorationists than someone who mainly wants to listen.

 

I guess one just doesn't consider a laser an analog device. It certainly didn't occur to me. Perhaps because just about everybody has at least one laser stuck into a CD player somewhere.
If it weren't a diode "reading" the light reflection, there could be some other technology to convert it at that point. But, maybe I'm making the process too cumbersome.

What again are the sound characteristics that make for an undesirable experience? And where does the unpleasantness come from in the chain? Is it the reading of the groove by the laser?
The reception of the signal on the diode? Further on down the chain?

Perhaps with all the improvements made in digital reproduction technology, it might be time to start from scratch, and re-design. Start with the stages that are not responsible for
the sound problems, and go from there?

 

Yes, and remember, CD had ALREADY happened!

If this technology had become available in the 1970s instead of the 1990s then it might at least have had some sort of success. However, in the 1990s vinyl was considered to be "dead' by the average pundit. Now it is making some kind of a comeback, but it's far too late for the laser turntable to make a difference.

There was a "concept" version of the laser turntable shown at CES in 1986, but the company behind it went broke in the late 80s. The tech was sold to BSR and eventually the ELP Laser Turntable made its debut ... in 1997. Just a tiny little bit too late, I think.

 

I guess if I had to characterize the sound... it sounds like the sound that would result from a cheap, plastic turntable. But at 100 times the cost and with lasers. I realize my demo was only through various A/D conversions via the CD they sent me, but the flaws of the system were pretty apparent even though they were raving about the quality, meanwhile comparing it to mythical performance issues of traditional turntables that I can't say I've ever experienced on anything half decent.

 

As a consumer product, it was expensive when introduced- as I recall, over $20k? For those willing to fork out the bucks because of a commitment to vinyl, I suspect there was a wait and see aspect to this-- I certainly didn't think about jumping on it when it was introduced. To many questions about SQ, for one, and I was pretty comfortable that good ol' plastic records, having survived as long as they did with kludgey needles and abuse, could--if found in good condition (in record grading speak, better than VG+)-- would fare just fine with a serious table, arm and cartridge of the conventional sort.
The technology has been used very effectively in archival settings to retrieve information from fragile media, like wax cylinders. See: http://irene.lbl.gov/sample-page/irene-home-history/
I got to see one in the flesh at the LOC archive, but not in operation.
There was a great article a couple years ago about some Edison talking dolls that were found with undamaged cylinders- this type of laser scanner was used to read the cylinders- apparently little girls singing a ditty-- and supposedly the first recorded music. (the dolls apparently had a habit of chewing up the cylinder as they played it, so few of these survived with intact cylinders).

 

I'm not disputing your account here; but I could swear that around '79-'81 (when, not coincidentally, I was being driven crazy by horrid, noisy U.S. LP pressings), a laser turntable was being developed; I think I read about it in Omni magazine. I never seriously pursued it, as a) no-one in my area carried it; and b) it went for something in the neighborhood of $10k! I thought that was the ELP table, but I may be mistaken. (It's possible JVC was the developer, too.) Whichever, it was supposed to read the LP grooves, while ignoring ticks, pops and other flaws like inner-groove distortion. I stopped worrying about it in '84 when I got my first CD deck.

 

As I explained in my first post, there is another way to read and play records with optics beside the ELP laser turntable and that't the DS optical cartridge. A good review of their first and higher cost model can be read here. It still use a stylus, requires a special power supply/EQ unit and their new model the DS-002 can be purchased for the affordable price of $5,000 in the USA.

Personally I don't have the commitment to LP records and the supportive faith system it requires to try either the ELP or the DS optical cartridge, but they are both available to those who wants them.

 

I think that was the same company who finally exhibited the thing in 1986 - but the problem was that despite years of talking about it, they could never get it off the ground. I suspect that the history of it goes back to the late seventies - but it was one of those "it's coming real soon" things that took close to twenty years to actually make it to the shops.

 

What I've heard from some archivists who have studied the question is that stylus playback, for recordings that can be played with a stylus, yields better results than optical scanning and digital processing with IRENE in its current state. For items such as delaminating lacquer discs that would be destroyed by stylus playback, IRENE can get you the audio you couldn't get otherwise, and the technology continues to improve.

 

That is the niche that the ELPJ laser turntable excels at. Archivist and restoration usage.

 

That could very well be. That link I posted was somewhat dated- circa 2004, I think- but if you listen to the first couple clips- one of a recording played back via Irene and the same copy with a conventional stylus, the difference is pretty significant. I think those Edison doll cylinder 'extractions' were done up in Boston, but may be wrong. The unit I saw was at the Culpeper facility in Va.

 

IMHO, its prohibitive price is the deal killer ...