How a Vinyl Record Works

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Gary Vandy from garyvandy.com here at Studio Center. In this clip we are going to talk about how vinyl records work. Basically a vinyl record was in the old days analog. To a CD today is what a vinyl record use to be. After a recording a master tape, which is the blended mix of whatever record is to be is sent to a mastering lab. A vinyl lab is cut by a mastering engineer on a lathe. A lathe is basically a giant machine that has a cutting head on it that cuts grooves into vinyl that are the exact representation of whatever wave form and sound they have on the master tape. A record is played by the exact opposite method. You have a needle attached to a cartridge, which is an amplifier going into your stereo system. What happens is the grooves in the record vibrate the needle, the vibration in the needle causes an electrical changes that represent sound waves, which are later converted into analog, and going through your amplifier into speakers, coming out of the speakers, which vibrate according to what electrical impulses are sent off of the record, from the needle off of the record. And that is how sound is reproduced analog wise. There is no conversion, there is no numbers, it is all just electrical impulses that represent sound waves. Now vinyl records use to come in three different forms. There is the thirty-three, which is a 33 1/3, which is the speed of the record. The forty-eight, which is the speed of the record. The forty-eight was generally used for singles, and actually in reality had better sound than the thirty-three, but the higher sampling rate today would have better sound than a lower sampling rate. When the grooves spin faster you can put more information on it. Records are becoming very popular again. Most people think they sound better than CDs, so never forget about vinyl records."