Phonographs and Gramophones for beginners

HOW IT WORKS:

The basic principles of how sound is recorded and played back.

How the ear works

Eardrum and Bones

Phonograph Reproducer. Hill & Dale (Vertical recording)

Gramophone Soundbox (Lateral recording)

• Sound recording and reproduction are directly related to how our ears work. The "Diaphragm" replicated the eardrum membrane and the "stylus bar, chuck and needle" try and replicate the three tinest bones in the "middle ear".
• Sound travels in invisible vibrations, sound waves. Each sound wave frequency has a precise sound.
• Sound recording is the transcription of these vibrations in the air onto a storage medium like a record disc. The process is reversed in sound reproduction, and the variations stored on the disc are transformed back into sound waves.
• Analog recording is when a diaphragm that senses changes in atmospheric pressure caused by acoustic sound waves, records them as a mechanical image of the sound waves and using a cutting stylus, cuts grooves on a soft master record.
• Through a process of electroplating, a hard stamper was made from the soft master. Basically a hard reverse mold of the soft master.
• On a phonograph, the sound waves are stored on wax cylinders in a "Hill & Dale" process, vertical recordings. That is the stylus cuts into the wax in an up and down motion as the cylinder is rotated at a set speed while cutting a spriral pattern into the wax. When another playback stylus attached to a diaphragm is placed back in the recorded groove and played back at the same speed as it was recorded, the diaphragm again moves the air and reproduces the same sound back through an amplifying horn.
• On a gramophone, the sound waves are recorded in a "lateral" pattern, that is the stylus moves from side to side instead of up and down.
• The gramophone record became the standard over the cylinder as the cylinder records were a lot more difficult and more expensive to mass produce. A mold had to be made of the wax master cylinder and then each cylinder had to be molded inside that master. On cooling, it shrank just enough to be removed from the mold. The flat disc record on the other hand required two flat masters which were used as stampers. The softened medium of shellac and later vinyl was easily stamped by the masters in their millions.
• Crackle, click, pop, hiss, wow and flutter. Those noisy records! Records, being a physical medium and the physical contact with a needle in a groove is going to make noise. Records get scratched, warp, collect dust and are generally filthy things. Keeping them clean and static free is a constant battle. Then there are recording and manufacturing defects, off-centre holes, bad inner sleves, poor pressings and the list goes on and on.......
• WHY!. Well there is nothing quite like listening to an analogue recording, especially a live recording where you can actually sence the artist in the room, even with the pops and crackles. Caruso may have died over a hundred years ago, but he is still full of life, right here in my living room, belting it out from my gramophone. Immortality.