Hi-Fi Starter Guide. Dialing in the Perfect Two-Channel Experience. The Difference a Tonearm Makes. Shopping for Vinyl. Caring for Vinyl. How to Clean Vinyl Records. Click here for more information about Yamaha turntables. All rights reserved. Terms of Use Privacy Policy Accessibility. BY Rich Tozzoli June 23, Additionally, recorded music helped begin to bridge a racial divide between whites and blacks in the United States.
Black artists' recordings grew in popularity, including jazz musicians in the s, Motown recording artists in the s and most recently many rap artists. The record industry continued to grow throughout the midth century, but after World War II, portable music became popular.
The second half of the century saw music quickly move through a variety of mediums from transistor radios to tape players and most recently to compact disc and MP3 players. But even as the way people listen to recorded music has evolved over the years, the record player can be considered the trendsetter. And these days, as we'll talk about next, vinyl records are making something of a comeback. Nipper is perhaps one of the world's most recognizable dogs, though probably more by product than by name.
In the iconic logo, Nipper is the Terrier sitting beside a gramophone, head slightly cocked, listening to his master's voice coming out of the cone-shaped amplifier. The original painting had Nipper listening to an Edison cylinder phonograph, but the image was sold to Emile Berliner's Gramophone Company in to be its trademark on condition that the phonograph be repainted as a gramophone with a horn.
In , Berliner's company became the Victor Talking Machine Company, which manufactured record players with the trademark, eventually giving Nipper iconic status [sources: BBC , Edie ]. The popularity of record players and vinyl recordings peaked in the s, but they are enjoying a comeback among certain music fans.
In the early days of hip-hop , disc jockeys in dance clubs wanted to keep people dancing to the best parts of a variety of songs. Using multiple turntables, they mixed music right on the spot. The process, called turntablism, includes cutting quickly between two records, stopping and starting the music, and dragging the needle against the record to create a rhythmic scratching sound [source: Neal ].
It's considered by many to be an art, just like playing another instrument. Also, many music lovers just prefer the sound of a vinyl record. They argue that, despite the occasional extraneous noises on a record from dust or a scratch, vinyl has a deeper, richer sound than a digital version, which can feel too perfect.
They also enjoy other aspects of records, such as liner notes, photos, posters and other album extras. And many simply like the social aspect of gathering together with friends or family to listen to music on the record player -- just like people did in the old days [source: Dell]. Learn more about record players by visiting some of the links and related articles on the next page. Perhaps you bought into each wave of recorded music and now have boxes of records and cassettes that you'd like to have on your MP3 player -- or at least on CD -- without buying them a second time.
One option to try is a converting machine that can transfer both records and tapes to CDs. It's about the size of a breadbox, and it opens to reveal a turntable on the top and inputs for a tape deck on the back [source: Pogue ].
You can record an entire album or select favorite songs to make unique compilations. Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. How Record Players Work. Audio Tech Image Gallery Record players started the trend of portable music by making it accessible to people.
See more audio tech pictures. Edison's Discovery In , Thomas Edison and his assistants attached a needle to the diaphragm of a telephone receiver with the idea that the needle could be used to etch an impression of sound onto quickly moving paper, thus creating a recording or sound writing.
Who Was First? Evolution of the Record Player " ". An old gramophone with a horn and flat disc like this is similar to Emile Berliner's design. How a Vinyl Record is Made The success of the gramophone to play recorded sounds was dependent on the ability to mass produce records.
What's in a Number? The fragile records were made with shellac. Successfully introduced in , they played for about 25 minutes per side. That means it lacks the purity of the gems you might find in jewellery. This diamond tip is usually shaped into a small point — though there is a variety of shapes the tip can take — that sits in the record groove and follows the wiggles as the record turns.
This movement is carried through the cantilever — the shaft to which the stylus tip is attached — and into the cartridge body. There are two types of cartridge: moving magnet and moving coil. They both work on the principle of using movement to induce current thanks to magnetic fields. But, as the names imply, in one the magnet moves to induce current while in the other the coil does so and the magnet is fixed. Or, if your amplifier is a line-level device, as many are, a dedicated phono stage.
What exactly does a phono stage do? The physical limitations of vinyl mean that the original signal has to be altered before it can be recorded — low frequencies are reduced in level and the highs are boosted. The receiver consisted of a tin foil wrapped cylinder and a very thin membrane, called a diaphragm, attached to a needle. Sound waves were directed into the diaphragm, making it vibrate. A hand crank turned the cylinder to rotate the tinfoil cylinder while the needle cut a groove into it to record the sound vibrations from the diaphragm.
The output side of the machine played the sound through a needle and an amplifier. The needle was set in the groove and the cylinder set to the beginning. The amplified vibrations played back the recorded sounds.
The recording medium used in the original phonograph was awkward to use and broke easily.
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