This "Backwards" Vinyl Record isn't just a gimmick
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- Опубликовано: 23 авг 2024
- A look at an unusual record that plays from the *inside out*.
Available from www.tacet.de/ma...
(This is not an affiliated link and I paid for my record).
Some people complained that the title of this video was ClickBait - so the word BACKWARDS is now in quotation marks to better highlight the fact that I'm just Quoting the Text written on the Record's Sleeve.
I tried changing it to INSIDE OUT - but then got complaints that the video wasn't about a Disney Movie.
A tone arm moving from the inside to outside of a record is BACKWARDS to one that goes from the outside to the inside, so there's no deception going on.
I’m aware Jack White did this on side A of Lazaretto...it’s mentioned at 04:10
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Please remember to rewind your records after you played them.
Claudio Bizama Especially if you're renting them.
This record is self-rewinding
Lol
Be kind, rewind
I've got an extra player just for this purpose.
In my days in broadcasting this type of record was called ‘Inside Start’. Technically they don’t rotate In an anticlockwise direction so they don’t play backwards. This was for many technical reasons but was confined primarily to 16” radio transcriptions. I still have a small semi professional disc recording lathe in my archive that will only cut inside start records.
Boléro is quite an odd piece, since it is thought to have been composed during a time when Maurice Ravel began to suffer from the effects of a Primary Progressive Aphesia. Progression of his neurological decline can be identified through deterioration in his handwriting, spelling errors and incorrectly drawn letters and numbers, and deficits in his speech and language. Boléro may have been Ravel's attempt at communicating with a world which he could no longer understand.
It really is quite fitting to have the record printed backwards.
What is remarkable is the piece "Unravelling Boléro" created by the artist Anne Adams, who too suffered form Primary Progressive Aphasia. She was initially unaware of the disease and during its progression, developed extraordinary visual creativity, and facilitation of her artistry.
As the disease progressed she began to embody auditory stimuli in visual form, through paintings such as ‘Rondo alla Turquoise’ and ‘Rhapsody in Blue’. She became fascinated with Maurice Ravel’s musical composition Boléro, translating each of its musical elements visually; which suggests that there may have been relatedness between her internal perceptual and conceptual images.
Neuroimaging revealed severe neurodegeneration of her left hemisphere, in the areas associated with language and audition.
However increased grey matter volume, was revealed in the posterior of her right hemisphere, specifically in the areas associated with integrating sensory information; suggesting that her auditory and visual pathways could have been integrated, she could see the music that she heard.
Lazmarr
comments like this makes me look at the commentsection. too bad they are the exception, not the rule.
+Thomas Herzog I agree, the good, well-thought out, comments are usually hidden away amongst all of the filler comments.
I had presented some work on Sensory and Cognitive Deficits in Frontotemporal Dementia and found that Maurice Ravel and Anne Adams were an interesting case and fit well with this video; so I wanted to share the work that I had done :)
+Furious George Haha I'm glad you found it educating, although it is more Neuroscience rather than music...
Interesting. I had also heard that Primary Progressive Aphesia tends to result in an obsession with repeating patterns, with some thinking this played a major role in the composition of Bolero, which is built from repeating themes. This isn't trying to take away from the creativity and genius of the composer. He could have just spent his days staring at ripples on a pond, but instead he composed what is often considered his greatest work. The disease may have had an influence on the structure of that work is all.
NPR had a pretty in depth story on this exact topic a year or two ago.
Never knew record vinyl had better sound dynamics at the beginning edge than the end of it.
ArtWorked it does, plus the tonearm angle often gets steeper leading to quite a bit of distortion.
CDs speed up at the centre and have a perpendicular head mechanism to counter both of these!
That's one of the consequences of constant angular velocity - at the outside of the record you have more track length to fit the information into compared to the inside. If record decks used constant linear velocity, this wouldn't be an issue.
I think that's why the maxi single was invented.
You've probably heard of "end of side distortion".
CDs spin faster on the inner tracks to keep the data read at the same rate otherwise the small read buffer would empty often and there would be breaks in the sound.
Edison's up there somewhere, chuckling to himself. Say what you like about cylinders, at least the grooves were consistent.
I'm pretty sure the only reasons we went from cylinder to disc was for cost savings and convenience. The same reasons many other superior methods get squashed by another.
Pretty much. Berliner discs could hold ~1 minute more (before Edison made 4 minute cylinders) and you could store more of them. (And I almost forgot: pressing records for a growing market was a lot easier!) I seem to think Berliner (and Edison) was well aware of what could happen with the grooves at the end of a record, but recording was too low fidelity to make it much of a concern. Apart from convenience, there were flaws with the cylinder design, namely the need to ream them back into shape. But hey, they were better than Edison's concrete houses...
christineadamsbeckett.com/2012/04/03/thomas-edisons-beautiful-failure/
EDIT: I'm forgetting, of course, that when you play 78s on an old gramophone the last few grooves can prove to be problematic and slow the record. The spring is running out of power, and a loud finish can drag it right down.
Probably Tesla fan boys suppressing it.... ;)
wpl955g - I just wanted to say thanks for the bloody good laugh.
The discs were just better for everything except easy recording.
I could see some 45s use that concept, especially those songs that use Spector's 'Wall of Sound' approach to building up their crescendos. Example, Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water.
So no secret hidden messages then? Aww... :P
twocvbloke If you play it backwards it says "worship Techmoan"
forwards you mean
TheTurnipKing true
Ravel also wrote a little-know piece named "Boléro Inversé", which, when played backwards, contained Bolero in its entirety, as a hidden message.
There is one . . . And it's a secret! :D
Thank you for zooming in so closely on the lead-in and run-out groove! I had seen that record played on another channel that had great sound but a pretty low-res video and I was really curious to see how the pressing handled the lead-in in particular.
Same as that of Beethoven’s double LP I purchased also from Tacet. Disc 2 side B plays backward because of the dynamic range needed by the orchestra music at the latter part.
I have a "3 sided" Monty Python album. One side has 2 grooves, so it's a gamble as to what "side" you'll hear when you cue it.
45 RPM 12" singles often sound dramatically better because of the speed increase over 33s.
Also, track 2 tends to sound best on lp's with fixed tonearms, because it is in roughly one of two perfect places for perpendicular stylus alignment over it's arc of the record. (The second place, further towards the middle, turns at a slower angular velocity.)
Nice vid - I thought that record would defeat all of your auto turntables.
Yes, I was reminded of that Monty Python stunt also! The 2 tracks on one side were like a spiral within a spiral.
I have the same album. Simply two concentric grooves which shared the same lead-out to ensure the record finished normally. I just broke out the record, and (to my slightly old eyes) there are 4 lead-in grooves, but three of them lead to the same start, so you have a 1 in 4 chance of hitting the 3rd side at the start of the record.
Matching Tie and Hanky is the album name if I remember correctly.
I also have an album from "Heaven 17, - Penthouse and Pavement" that has music into the runout groove, causing the end of the song "For A Very Long Time" to repeat infinitely, or until you get bored of it. It's a mastering masterstroke!
Too bad most 45 singles were cut louder than the original songs on an album (basically the Loudness War before CDs were a thing), so the higher quality would be cancelled out by an attempt to make the single stand out from the competition.
As far as linear tracking compatibility, the electronically controlled turntables need a sensor and feedback circuit before they are able to track backwards. As an example, the B&O Beogram 4000 is the only B&O model that can track backwards, just because they removed the feature on subsequent models. It was originally meant to compensate for off-center records as far as I know.
Man... Bang & Olufsen used to make some absolutely badass turntables!
I have 12" of Pop Music by M .it has two 'concentric' grooves with two tracks 'combined'. It was luck of the draw which version you got to hear.
There a Kate Bush 12" that does this too. (Sensual World)
Nick Firth The Shins - Australia 7" as well. Also, on the Jack White record Lazaretto, mentioned in the video, you can get two different intros for a particular song depending on where the needle drops.
Monty Python apparently did the same. Where exactly you put the needle down, would determine which track would play. Songs would appear and disappear on subsequent playbacks. They didn't mention it anywhere on the sleeve.
There were also old horse-racing records, meant for game nights in pubs and things. Same thing, interleaved grooves, with different horses winning in different grooves. Assuming the person putting the needle down doesn't cheat, you'd get a random result each time. You'd bet on the horses and see who won.
It's a fairly old trick, and there's more examples than these.
@@greenaum You betcha! MAD Magazine, in the 1970s, included in one of their issues a flexidisk with like eight different versions of the same song.
@@xaenon 😯
Yes that's right folks, records are lower and lower "bitrates" the closer they get to the center. They do not in fact have infinite bitrate like some vinyl fanboys claim. In fact special lower quality masters have to be made for vinyl versions of albums because of this and other limitations of the format, you can't just use the regular master of the album. Get the CD version folks. This may surprise some people but a format that started in the 1980s is actually better sound quality than one invented in the 1890s.
What about tape? Correct me if I am wrong but don't CD's degrade over time?
You were mentioned on Absolute Radio Mat, Pete Donaldson the presenter can't get enough of Techmoan.
Is he the guy that does Those Ruddy Shouty Voiceovers For Channel Four... Crikey! and all that?
Back in the old days of radio broadcasting they transferred programs around on 16" transcription discs, sometimes these were lathe cuts. They played them from the inside out for a very different reason. They were still using steel needles in rather large magnetic pickup units ("Record Plows"). Now a steel needle wears down during the course of playing a side and gets a duller sound as the high end goes.
So by playing the records from the inside out they had a fresh needle for the inner gooves, which naturally have less top end. And by the time the needle was dulling it had reached the faster outside grooves. So it was sort of like automatic "mechanical EQ compensation". And it worked very well indeed.
Fascinating. I think I always subconsciously noticed that the last track on the side of an album tended to be one of the quieter ones, but had no idea there was a practical reason for it.
The Jack White - Lazaretto album also features a hologram on the opposite side in addition to the backwards play orientation.
ruclips.net/video/uZKgpzjYaVY/видео.htmlm4s
Techmoan Nice. Lol
plus music in the label section, too! one side is 45, the other is 78.
tubular bells would benefit from this
Almost by default music is composed and performed with 'build-ups' or crescendos, it's the natural way to invoke drama and emotion. There are many, many compositions and recordings that would benefit hugely from reverse-cutting, I've thought so for years (decades!).
M R A Scott Well, you say that, but nowadays everything gets so compressed in both the mixing and mastering stage that even if there’s dynamics in the compositions it’s not there in the sonics at all. For sure there’s classical and prog compositions that would benefit from this though
I love this comment so much
that's exactly what i was thinking!
Yes that's what I thought of right away
It's amazing to learn how vinyl records were planned with loudness in mind.
Here's an anecdote for Bolero I once heard on the radio. A newly employed sound engineer was working on a radio recording, live recorded from an orchestra. And he's wondering what's wrong with the equipment and levels the recording until there are normal peaks on the VU meter. Few minutes later he adjusts the levels again since the music goes increasingly louder. And so on. Turns out, this was than the most normalized and leveled recording of Bolero ever since: all in one loudness. And the sound engineer is presumably now doing something with wood and cute kittens. Unfortunately I wasn't able to verify this anecdote but so it now turns into a legend.
Sound on disc "talkies" back in the 1920's also ran from the inside out. The steel needles used would start to wear out during the playing of one side, so it was reckoned that the longer groove per second length on the outside would compensate. This was the first use of the 33 1/3 speed, using shellac records and "standard" grooves, as opposed to the microgrooves used with vinyl.
I love when I can learn something new! I never knew why records were ordered the way they were! It is funny how something from an engineering standpoint ended up changing how we perceive record track lists!
Hi there!
I have the same LP for years now and I love it! I've found it in a german HiFi magazine and had to have it. And I think it makes totally sense to do it that way.
Keep up the good work! Regards, Etna.
Tacet is a VERY highly regarded label among us classical music lovers. I have several LPs and CDs on the Tacet label. However, I was never aware of their inside-out vinyl recordings. So, thank you Techmoan! Looking at their LP catalog, it appears there are quite a number of releases that feature inside-out recordings on at least one side of the pressing. Now I just have to try one. Perhaps Beethoven's 7th symphony for starters ....
See, this is why I love this channel. I’m always learning something new and every episode is interesting to watch.
Why wasn't the record designed like this from the get-go? All classical masterpieces start soft and quiet and end in a firework of instruments.
Pathe made this type of disc around 100 years ago, probably for this reason. They were called "centre-start" rather than backwards
of course the other record is a jack white record
He wants to take all that effort he puts into recording stuff on Malaysian cornflakes packets, and put it into writing a few better songs. Also he could get a bass player maybe.
@@greenaum obsessed with number 3. has 2 person band.
This is why I keep coming back to this channel. It's always interesting to see what studios and engineers do in order to work around the limitations of the media they are working with, especially with old formats, be it tricks like this or old-school dynamic range/spectrum shaping with noise reduction on tape.
I am kind of sad you didn't go deeper into history of the composition itself. See, Ravel had a strong disease and Bolero was one of the last pieces he wrote. The disease is basically making his mind think about same things over and over and over again so he can't really be creative anymore. And the composition, just like the disease, is adding instruments to this beautiful play, slowly increasing in intensity and in volume. The composition is also written in 3/4 notation which makes it not that common.
This particular piece of music is one of the first vinyls Ive ever listened to into and I'm glad I did.
Some of the early portable shellac record cutters that they used in radio broadcasting also cut from the center. The reason was that the material that the cutter needle removed had a tendency to collect in the center of the record. If they cut from the edge they would have to remove it with some sort of suction device to get it out of the way. If they cut from the center there was no need to remove it during the cutting process because the material would collect on the area where the grooves had already been cut.
Not at the Danish National Radio were I saw it demonstrated. They cut the records just like the one in Techmoan's video and played them on a normal record player. But the records were never in the hands of "ordinary" users. They were only played by professional radio technicians. And most of the records only existed as an original with no copies.
People from radio told me that it was a measure to distinguish recordings made by radio station from those commercially pressed. Records (Vitaphone) made as soundtrack for a motion picture were cut this way as well.
I once had an album that had the correct recording on the left channel and a completely different album and artist on the right channel. I returned it at the time. I should have kept it and had a collector's item...
Every time I am notified of a new Techmoan upload, I feel an emotion nor dissimilar to hearing of a new star Wars movie! Thank you for what you do!!!
Actually the idea is very old. Back in the days when some radio broadcasts had been recorded to a non-standard big record the one side is played normally while the other side is played from the inside out. That is to avoid the sudden jump from low Q at the end of the one side to the high Q at the beginning of the second side.
In the early days of home disc recording, the machines cut from the center out. The reason for this was for chip control; the chips would spin off the edge of the disc. Cutting from the edge in caused the chips to form in the middle and required constant attention.
tom7601 I was wondering about that, I picked up some home recordings and they had to be played from the center out.
I clicked right away thinking it was going to be about the star wars record printing backwards again
I remember!
I'm not familiar with this, care to link to what you're talking about?
ruclips.net/video/uZKgpzjYaVY/видео.html I think this is what he's talking about, check the comments section there for more details.
If you play a Star Wars record backwards, you hear a terrifying, soul chilling voice imploring you _"missa wanna yousa to murder alllll of yousa fami and friends, missa wanna da maxibig"._
pixel girl triggering my PTSD
Inside start records are not a new idea. You can find 16" broadcast transcriptions and early dub-plates as well as early home recordings that start from the inside. But the logic is solid here for cutting it this way. Makes perfect sense.
In broadcast transcriptions, were a program was comprised of two 16" discs for a 30 minute program, usually the first disc would start at the inside, and the second would start at he outside.
This was done mainly for volume and fidelity continuity, as there was no compensation for gain and frequency loss in the inner bands. As the disc tracked from the inside, volume, dynamics and frequency response would increase, ending at it's peak spec. The second disc would start out side at this peak gain, and slowly decrease in volume, dynamic and frequency response. this made the disc change audibly seamless.
I have many examples of these, as well as some that start at the outside on 1 and inside on 2 for the same reasons.
Home recordings on acetate (nitrocellulose lacquer, actually)are often inside start.
Most early aluminum "Instantaneous Recordings" are often inside start as well.
So, from about 1932 into the mid 1950's, this was fairly common.
Very nice episode. Hats off to Bolero's thoughtfulness for the music style in sync with the vinyl pressing.
We want techmoan t shirts!!!
Brilliant video Techmoan. Why are you and your videos so cool? I hope you've got more record videos in the pipeline! 😎
Also is there an opposite or bolero?
Forgive me for butting in, but what exactly do you mean by "is there an opposite of (of?) bolero"? are you referring to what's on the other side of the record? If so, it's shown @1:25 - it's another composition by Ravel: La Valse
I think he means if there's a type of music that starts very loud and then it slowly goes more and more quiet, with less instruments towards the end. The exact opposite of Bolero music.
Aaahhh of course, how silly of me not to realise that ;)
Unfortunately, I can't think of any piece of music with this charactereistic.
What an interesting idea. I wouldn't be surprised if more producers don't start taking advantage of this. One thing worth noting is a lot of vinyl has more clicks in the beginning of the side than the end. Making the record start backwards could help minimize the obvious (and annoying clicks) each time you flip it over. Thanks for another awesome episode, Techmoan!
The inside out playback was a common practice with broadcast transcription discs, the first portion of the program would be recorded inside out, then the second portion outside in, it helped to match the fidelity of the playback. This process started being used in 1926 with the Western Electric sound on disc sound film system Vitaphone.
Some say playing this record on a dark winter night summons two ice skaters who can actually win a medal for Britain
Amir Pourghoureiyan
Yes, still waiting for Jeremy Clarkson to appear on a Techmoan YT video.
Clarkson seems like the kind of person who back in the 80s bought the worst sounding, most cheaply made all-in-one stereo from the back of a magazine and insisted it was the pinnacle of hi-fi because the ad said the speakers were high wattage. Watch the old Top Gear news segment on Infiniti, it's clear that none of the old hosts (or at least he and Hammond) know anything about audio systems.
watershed44 I don't get the top gear reference, how does it relate to Torvill and Dean?
Two ice _dancers_ , not skaters.
Brilliant idea! I think the only quirky vinyl thing left is parallel tracks or grooves 180° apart with different audio content. Is that real or have I dreamt that as a child?
Nope, you haven't imagined it.
Rush released an album like that called "Rush n roulette"
Many years ago I had a horse racing game on 12" vinyl. It had a number of different tracks for different games. Put a bet on with friends.
Tim Hollingworth pretty sure there was a monty Python record or something that did that. Also, both sides were labelled side 2
It's very real. Now here's an interesting thought....These devices are probably digital now, but originally, "The Bee Says" and similar toys used a multi- start record. For example, moving the bee's stinger would align the stylus with one of 26 grooves-one for each letter of the alphabet. The record remained stationary, while the stylus spun inward. That is why the bee spins while playing-it's not for looks. "The Farmer Says" was near identical, but only had about 12 grooves.
Off-topic: That feeling when you reach the end of a Techmoan video and expect a puppet skit based on how much is left on the progress bar, but instead it's all Patreon supporters and that makes you happy too. ❤️🍍
It would play back on my Sansui P-L75 Linear Turntable. It tracks both ways, but only spins in one direction. Anyone reading this who decides to get one, it's recommended. Once fine tuned (download a service manual and follow instructions exactly) the compuedit playback is really cool. I got a brand new needle, and with its stock cartridge, its sound is comparable to my higher-end Ortophone Super OM-40 on the way ot handles the groove's inner distortion. I like it as my playback table because of the track select and repeat features. Mainly for classical and some pop records. My main tables are 2x Technic 1200's with swappable cartridges, depending on what I am doing (DJ or Playback), as to vet my vinyl skill level.
Came for the backwards Vinyl Record stayed for the outro
!oediv taerG
ho
.aedi looc a si dne eht ta pool etinifni ehT .tuo edisni eht morf syalp taht drocer a fo draeh reven ev'I .oot ti dekil I
...!ylreporp ti yalp t'nac reyalp lyniv ruoy taht tuo dnif uoy nehw remmub a otni nrut _seod_ ti tuB ...eurT
ecaftuuttyT ehT+
The Tyttuutface, keeping up this backwards typing is now a pain, possibly because of the wine in me 😄 I love how the replies have continued the backwards typing, and I'm almost reluctant to break it. But I'm pretty sure a lot of other (forwards playing) records have used the infinite loop at the end, I think there's a Beatles one that did?
Architector #4, that is some god damned dedication right there, with Tyttu's username at the end and all. I want to thumb you up thrice, at least.
Novelty records/tapes/etc and vintage hifi Techmoan videos = THE BEST Techmoan videos
As always you videos are great. I had no idea about the audio range of the inner and out rings. Love your channel. Keep them coming.
The same thing is true of a CD, which is why a CD does not have a fixed RPM, it varies as it is playing to take this into account.
Chauncey Gardener It matters, just for a different reason.
Computer CD and optical drives use Constant Angular Velocity, because it's easier to just spin the disc round like a nutter. If you're reading it in as data, you can buffer it in RAM and play at the proper speed easily enough.
Computer CD drives tend to run at CLV when you are playing audio CDs or DVDs. I think they switch to CAV if they detect the data is being requested at a speed higher than 1,5x. I think also this is done purely for energy saving (in laptop drives), noise (it wouldn't be fun to listen to your audio CD while the drive is running at 6000 RPM all the time) and wear.
It's called a record, not a vinyl. Vinyl is what it's made from; it's not the name of the actual object.
I expected the Pink Floyd “Secret Message” :D
You can take any auto reverse cassette deck and (whoopsie) the switch that selects the side of the head that will read the tape, and you have a player that can play any cassette in reverse. I did this in high school. There were a few other songs with deliberate messages as well, and some others with backwards piano playing, and an interesting one (The Cure - Pornograhy) just had some news from the radio playing backwards.
Haze Anderson Cool, I had a Teac 4 track, but it never occurred to me to try it. Maybe just that I was already over it by the time I got a rtr deck. I miss it, but it would hurt me to lug it around now :D
I have that record. The science makes sense, but only one studio utilized it. Can you imagine Beatles albums using this recording method? It would sell millions.
This is terrific, thanks! I've never seen a record that played from the inside. While you were demonstrating it I was wondering "I wonder if this would work on one of those linear tracking turnta..." and then you read my mind.
Bring back the puppets! :)
Yup. Much as I like hearing our lad bang on about unusual recording formats, I'm at least 50% here for the puppets!
Was looking for the obligatory puppet comment.Puppets rule, i want more :D
I miss the puppets !
There taken a break
The puppets are hiding somewhere on the Internet, and he expects up to find them. Then he'll continue the sketches.
All that effort in mastering, and then they press it off-centre. Talk about messed up priorities...
This is absolutely fascinating! This does make sense as I have three recordings of the Bolero that have an issue of sounding compressed and distorted during the final measures. I am glad a version exists that works around the issue in a novel way. Pathe was famous for issuing discs that played from the inside out during the early 20th century, along with unusual disc sizes (up to 14 inches).
Really enjoy watching your videos they’re always worth the wait. Although more shorter videos like this would be cool to see more often!
Mind = blown!
They have to do this with 1812 Overture.
!gnitseretnI
oot eM yuG CP ehT
/moc.esrevertxet.www//:ptth
Wow! Its so simple, but I didn't know that - there is less information on the end of vinyl!
Thank You!
I have my great grandmothers original. Great song but one you can't listen to often. It sticks in your head and find myself whistling or drumming it out on the woodwork during those mid day wandering mind moments for months after.
Maybe lynyrd skynyrd freebird? Lol
Think I’ll stick to CD where the speed of the disc varies to give a constant linear motion rather than constant rotational speed. 😀
Also CDs play from inside out anyway.
.... It's digital.... It's completely different
I'm going to stick with my Edison cylinders. Constant linear speed from beginning to end, and you don't have to turn them over!
_CDs are a technological marvel when mastered correctly._
Nevetheless, the vinyl (analogue) disc _at its best_ is so much better than CD _at its best_ it's not even funny.
M R A Scott: Yeah, or to put it another way: There's nothing a $20.00 CD player can do that a $20,000 vinyl-playing system can't do better.
I like your outro. Eather music and video. As always thanks for publishing.
You should do a video on those obscure large 16 inch 33 1/3 rpm coarse groove format transcription discs used by radio stations from the early 1930’s to the 1960’s. Many of them were centre start. They were used for sindicated radio programs, commercials, station ID, I remember encountering these giant discs at pawn shops, libraries, 2nd hand record stores.
It's probably safe to say that records don't get more unusual than this...
Josh Bacon: Monty Python - Matching Tie and Handkerchief is pretty unusual.
Richie Hawtin - DE9 | Closer To The Edit (Parts) is also very unusual - 120 locked grooves on 2 x 12”
One can only hope
Should we tell him about Lazaretto?
I am the Beat by the Look has an endless loop at the end where they shout "Beat! Beat!" over and over again until you get up and remove the stylus.
Very interesting!
....terrible wallpaper.
Wonderful sound, strange shape?
One look at that disc and one can see how the performance becomes louder with time. Near the center, it is shiny, near the edge, like an asphalt road in Michigan.
I remember having two 78 RPM records in my family when I was young, that were inside-out. One was looked like any 78, but had "PLAYBACK" on the "label" (not really a paper label, rather an orange pigment-filled groove).
The other was a very thin record with very thin plastic over a thin aluminium core. It was my father singing, he had it made ten years before he met my mum.
The technology of the time period that you generally cover is just so fascinating. It reminds me of my favorite era of cars too. It's during the time of this spread of technology and rapid development, but before everything just became cheap plastic and embedded electronics.
Another technical reason to NOT buy vinyl :P Thanks Mr Moan ;)
sucotronic Not to buy what?😂
I hate vinyl as well, but at least spell it right.
Dana W ups, you're right, my fault
Indeed. It's one thing if you like the quirks of vinyl (including the sound), but the hipsters who claim vinyl has better audio fidelity than digital formats (usually supporting this with stair-step waveform diagrams, talk of frequencies that are outside the range of human hearing at normal listening volume anyway and usually deliberately attenuated when cutting records, inappropriate comparisons to video, and other bullshit) are just flat wrong.
Wax cylinders all the way for me.
Ayy techmoan my nigga 👌
Harch....
I thought i was ur nigga
We had a thing
Does anyone care about racism
sarcastically calling a white guy a nigga is racism? okay m8 /s
I love how clever yet simple retro tech can be.
One of the first film sound systems (Vitaphone) used lacquer disks that played from the inside out...mainly to help avoid skipping from the abrupt start of the film projector. (The turntable was mechanically coupled and driven by the film projector, off of the main drive gear box.)
So, It's always rewinding?
Joshua Tobin Looks like it's just always playing backwards and not rewinding actually. Playing it forward would probably be akin to rewinding it.
No. The turntable and record are still turning in a normal clockwise rotation.
It's a classical piece, so I think you mean "decomposing." ;-)
This was a joke lol
I got it !!
too many brainiacs here lol
First (had to) but thats amazing i want one now
nigga how?
nodrinks patron mate we get it early its only a dollar
i bet your house is like a museum for old tech. It's amazing how much you have!
The first inside start discs were produced in 1906 by Pathe, largely for the same reasons as the Ravel pieces: the finale of songs tend to be the loudest part. The early talking pictures using the 1926 Vitaphone process (double system, with film synchronized to disc) were also center-start, 33 1/3 rpm records.
A 6 min video? I feel robbed....
Wow - awesome, concise and free content - but yet you’re such a miserable sod that you still must bitch.
Techmoan will be on holiday, and these are some of his quick pre-programmed video's while he's away. It was either a short video, or nothing at all. Be happy!
Relax. It was a joke. Techmoan usually produces longer format content. I'll make sure the put "lol" after statements meant to be humorous in the future as not to trigger the more delicate among you.
My god, just shut the fuck up.
Techmoan, great explanation about the dynamic range of the Vinyl LP depending on where the tonearm is. When initially saw where you were going with this video based on the song, I was hooked! Thanks for doing this video.
Interesting to see a consumer record recorded this way. Vitaphone talking picture sound track records were recorded this way as were 'electrical transcriptions ' for delayed radio broadcast. Vitaphone did it so they could be cued more accurately placing the playback stylus. Radio transcriptions alternated, outside in, and then inside out. This is because the velocity of the groove changes the sound characteristics as the diameter gets smaller. In order to minimize the difference in sound, a series would have been played, outside start, then inside, outside, etc. 80+-years ago.
Vitaphone has a very interesting story. Early films had a run time of 11 minutes per reel (half of today's films). Warner Bros. needed a record with the same run time and the same diameter as the reel, which I think was 10 inch. Some say that is how the 33rpm speed was chosen- it was the only was to get the run time to match. The projectionist had to align the start mark on the record so when he changed reels, the sound would be syncronised. If the record skipped, or the film was spliced, look out! He had to re-sycronise very quickly! He would speed up or slow down the projector. So the system was a little bit problematic, but they say it sounded better than early sound-on-film systems.
how weird your video popped up in suggestions, a week after I bought my own copy of this from Tacet. Tacet makes some very interesting records. Definitely a label to keep an eye on. Thanks for explaining the reasoning behind the backwards play, I have not opened the record wrapper yet so I didn't know there was utility in the backwards play. One should never play such a record on an automated turntable anyhow.
old 100RPM Pathe records were like this.
Well their speed was described somewhere between 60 and 120 rpm
Well their speed was described as somewhere between 60 and 120 rpm
I learn so much from this channel.
Actually this was very common in the days when radio programs were recorded on transcription discs. Two 16" discs have a a playing time of 15 minutes each. So it was done in a way that you not notice the switch between discs. In the 50s both Philips Records and Polydor Records actually considered doing this for classical releases. At the time my dad was working at the Philips Laboratory in Eindhoven. I have one of those tests discs that my dad brought home. The program he told me at the time was that many turntables had auto return or players where you could stack many LPs and singles. So at the end of the day they decided not to continue. The Philips Records "backwards test" record i have was recorded with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with a selection of pieces for the format. The one we have at home is 1 of 5 that were pressed. One copy is in the Philips archives and another is at the Sound & Vision Museum in Hilversum. One was my dads and the other two were kept by the then director of Philips Laboratory and another engineer. The recording is mono.
I believe Emil Berliner's earliest disc recordings were cut from the outside in. It was only later on that 78s were cut in what we thik of as the conventional manner. Strawbs' album Bursting at the Seams ended side 1 with the rocky "Down By the Sea" followed by "The River" which is a quieter ballad. They were always meant to be played in the opposite order, but the band were told "Down By the Sea" had too much bass for the grooves nearer the centre to handle. It wasn't until the album was finally remastered for CD that the songs were heard in the correct order.
Brilliant solution to that inherent downside of audio dynamics. Thanks for bringing this to my awareness. Cheers!
In the past a lot of development was done to get that dynamic range with little or no compression. What comes to mind is the Telarc Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and playing Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. It played normally but when the digital cannons were played the modulation of the groove was so great is was clearly visible.
16-inch Electrical Transcriptions (or ET’s) of U.S. radio programs were cut in this manner beginning in the 1930’s for this same reason as mentioned in the show. Because longer-formatted programs needed more than one side to record the entire program, the recordings began “center-start” so that when the transition between sides occurred, the quality of the sound would be at the same place on both discs.
16" Vitaphone discs also played from the inside to the out. The reasoning was that they changed the needle every time they changed the disc because the steel needles wore out so fast; playing the disc from the outside would quickly wear the needle, so by the time it got to the inside where the groove speed is slower, the worn needle would damage the record quicker. Playing it from the inside with a new needle, the needle actually wore less over the course of a record and also didn't damage the record as much.
tacet is a record label that is deeply indebted to high quality productions and quite well known in Germany for that (including this special record running from inside to outside). I do own some CDs of that label and they are all outstanding according to the sound quality. Some of them has been mastered through analogue equipment only, which includes some valved devices that makes the CDs sounding very very pleasant (at least to my ears). In other words: It's worth to have a closer look / listen to their catalogue.
Actually the French Pathe gramophones ALL played from the inside out, and they had a speed of 90-100rpm!
As for why this record doesn't work with linear tracking turntables, inside the arm of a linear turntable there's a switch that detects when the arm is being pushed towards the centre of the record, and at that point it spins the tracking motor a bit to advance the tornarm bed further towards the centre until the switch no longer has pressure on it and then the motor stops inward motion of the bed until it detects pressure again. Why it doesn't move in the other direction is there is no switch to detect pressure in the outward direction, only inward!
The old Pathe records from the turn of the 20th century used to do this for the exact same reason, but also because there's less surface noise at the center, so that was another reason to record songs that started quiet this way.
Your outro is a piece of art.
Yes this makes perfect sense for the Bolero, never thought about it this way. Good video.
A very smart move, as the inner groves have a tiny bit more distortion than the outer grooves. I would love to have that record, it’s so cool!
I have the same composition on a vinyl here in my house ( I forgot to say that my record is from 1988) in the normal position of a disc, and I always thought they should have recorded this disc from the center, since the symphony is low at the beginning and gradually increasing the volume . as the quality of the sound declines a little as you get closer to the center of the disc, the highest part of the symphony was precisely in that area of lower sound quality, so I loved this video and was happy to know that someone had this same thought that I and could put into practice this recording model from the center, giving much more freedom the sound quality of this particular recording (sorry for the text)
That is interesting. In general. This would also mean in general that the music on the outer tracks is more richer in quality than the inner track.
I never considered how diameter must affect speed and size/position of the pits and troughs. Amazing video! Thanks.
Cool video thanks! However I think at 2:50 you've said it backwards- as the stylus moves to the center it's getting more information in the same amount of time, not less. I think that's what makes it difficult because too much is crammed in the groove there.
This idea makes perfect sense, and has been discussed with orchestra pieces in the past.
That is so sweet. I just picked up a copy! Can't wait to get it in the mail.