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The Great 78 Project over at the Internet Archive has been professionally digitizing old 78 RPM records for a while now. These records were all made between 1898 and sometime in the 1950s. Over 20 collections have been selected for digital access and physical preservation with the help of George Blood, L.P. and the Archive of Contemporary Music. So far about 26,000 of the 78s have been added to the Internet Archive. Each disc has about 3 minutes of audio per side. Most of the discs are made from shellac and really quite brittle, perhaps even more brittle than today's digital formats.
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by ledow on Monday August 14 2017, @02:54PM (7 children)
Last time I Google this stuff, you could just scan in the record at high DPI and there was a bit of software that would perfectly reproduce the audio from it (by following the tracks in software alone, and forming even a stereo LP image - and LPs store their data in a format denser than a 78, which is why they can spin slower).
Why a preservation project would try to rotate these brittle, antique things, and then run a needle across them and try to capture an analog waveform, I can't fathom.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by drussell on Monday August 14 2017, @03:44PM (2 children)
Not even close! Sure, you can get the sound off the record using optical scanning (and in some cases it even sounds fairly good) but it is nowhere even close to "perfectly reproducing" the audio!
Something tells me you have no idea what you're talking about, as far as sound quality goes. Have you ever even heard the audio output from an optically scanned record of any type?
(Score: 2) by ledow on Monday August 14 2017, @05:52PM
You mean it'll be worse than this:
https://t.co/QM4hc0rVCf [t.co]
(One of Project78's examples).
(Score: 2) by Zyx Abacab on Monday August 14 2017, @11:03PM
A laser turntable would probably be the right solution. (Though that's probably not what the grandparent was talking about.)
This sort of optical system would be ideal for archiving the records, at high fidelity, without introducing further wear.
(Score: 4, Informative) by KritonK on Monday August 14 2017, @05:24PM
Actually, there was an old project that involved scanning records (in pieces, then stitching them, as LPs don't fit in a common A4 scanner), then trying to get some sound out of the scan. I don't think the project went anywhere other than a proof of concept, and certainly did not perfectly reproduce the audio.
On the other hand, there are record players that use a laser instead of a needle to reproduce the sound from records. Interesting idea, as this does not damage records, unlike scratching them with a diamond-tipped needle. I have no idea what kind of sound these record players produce, though.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by anotherblackhat on Monday August 14 2017, @06:34PM (2 children)
Some math;
Assuming
78 RPM
3 minute length.
4 inch radius (10" record, with a 2" diameter center)
78 RPM * 3 minutes = 234 revolutions
234 / 4 = 58.5 tracks per inch.
If your scanner can do 1200 DPI, that's about 1200/58.5 dots or 20
log2(20) = 4.3.
So less than 5 bits per sample, which is way better than I expected, but I'd call 5 bits per sample "lousy" not "perfect".
Those old records were designed to have a heavy needle resting on them.
Modern pick-up heads are so light by comparison that they are unlikely to cause noticeable wear after one or two plays.
Laser Interferometry can measure about 10-12 meters.
That's 6 orders of magnitude better.
Enough to get 25 bits per sample, which is probably better than your ADC.
(Probably better than the vinyl used to make the record, too.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 15 2017, @03:36AM (1 child)
Some 78 RPM records were made of vinyl, but shellac was much more common.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 15 2017, @04:09AM
...as mentioned in the summary.